Despite the “tax-the-rich” claims of dems, the FTX debacle and this bank implosion trend are ways to reward the mega-rich with taxpayer funding and circumvent the tax code. So, the net effect is hundreds of times worse than the current tax code. They are filling their pockets before China/Russia invade our country and assume full control. The only upside is that the dems that voted to make this happen will be subject to communism and totalitarianism. That is something to look forward to. [US Patriot]

The “rich people” with money in Silicon Valley Bank are the real winners in Joe Biden’s handling of the California-based bank’s collapse, economist Peter St Onge says. 

After the fall of Silicon Valley Bank over the weekend, the Biden administration announced that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will cover all depositors’ money there.

Normally, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is responsible for covering deposits up to $250,000, ensuring that most small businesses and individuals are financially protected from a collapse. But in this case, the FDIC is going far beyond that $250,000 cap to cover every deposit in Silicon Valley Bank, regardless of the amount. 

“If the administration gets away with this, then we are going to start moving into a world where bankers, where Wall Street, feels like they can take any risk they like, because this is all going to get bailed out because you’ve got these human shields,” St Onge, a research fellow in economics at The Heritage Foundation, says. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.) 

Ultimately, the federal government’s actions to protect Silicon Valley depositors probably will result in higher inflation, St Onge says. “I think we’re very likely to see a lot more inflation,” he says.

St. Onge joins this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss how Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and what Biden’s actions mean for the nation’s economy. 

Read the lightly edited transcript.

Virginia Allen: We are joined today by Heritage Foundation research fellow in economics Peter St Onge. Peter, thanks so much for your time today. We really appreciate you joining.

Peter St Onge: Thanks for having me here.

Allen: So, we are watching a very interesting situation unfold right now with Silicon Valley Bank and honestly, what we’re seeing, it’s bringing up memories from 2008 and the bank bailouts there, but we’ve just seen this major bank fold in Silicon Valley. Before we get too far into the weeds of how this happened and all the details, go ahead and let us know just a little bit about this bank. Who were the investors, specifically the tech companies that had money in this bank?

St Onge: Silicon Valley Bank is almost a country club-style bank where you’ve got to be a big shot to be there. So you’ve got to be a significant startup in Silicon Valley. There were a lot of startups that would give them a call, they got to try to get their prestige membership in the bank, and they would be told, “Well, you guys are kind of small. Come back when you’ve got more money.”

And so pretty much anybody who was anybody in Silicon Valley was doing business with this bank. A lot of those companies were doing business, a lot of the individuals—so people like Mark Cuban had a big chunk of change in this bank. And the way that they would work is if you had a relationship with Silicon Valley Bank, they would expect that you do all of your banking there. So your home mortgage, your personal accounts, the whole thing.

And what it appears happened here is that Silicon Valley Bank was playing very fast and loose with a number of things that you wouldn’t expect from banks. So, for example, they were accepting yachts as collateral, boats—and yachts lose value very quickly, they’re not very liquid. It’s not like selling your used car. So that’s kind of abnormal.

It seems that they had equity relationships with a lot of their depositors where they were getting shares in companies in exchange for these relationships. It seems as if there was a fair amount of shenanigans going down.

The thing is, those are more the spark that caused the crisis at this bank. And by the way, this is a large bank, OK? This is one of the top 20 banks in the country. So they’re looking at about $200 billion of deposits. So despite all these shenanigans, that’s not actually, ironically, what brought them down. What brought them down, and this is the bigger concern, is something that’s going to really impact every bank in America, it was something called duration risk.

That means, when you buy treasuries, government debt—so, government debt basically underpins the entire banking system. Regulators love it, of course they want you to buy government bonds because they’d like somebody to soak all that money up. And the problem is that those bonds, they’re different than cash. Cash, a dollar is always a dollar, but when it comes to government bonds, when the interest rate moves around, those bonds can either get more or less valuable.

Now, what happened over the past year is that since the Federal Reserve caused all of this inflation, they basically stomped on the accelerator to try to convince voters to accept lockdowns, they stomped on that accelerator and that led to inflation, of course. At that point, the Fed panicked and they said, “My goodness, to stop the inflation, we’re going to have to ramp rates up.” There’s a surge in interest rates, and that’s essentially stomping on the brake pedal now, OK? And so when you do that, then all of those banks that had all of these Treasury bills as basically what’s in their vaults, those Treasury bills across the board had dropped by about 20%.

So imagine if you’re a bank and you got a bunch of money in the vault and all of a sudden 20% of it evaporated, you are going to have problems.

Now, in the case of Silicon Valley Bank, I guess they were the cleverest guys in the room, so they were very aggressive about that duration risk. So it looks like they may have losses closer to 40% on a lot of that collateral. But the concern here is that this may be something that we are seeing across the entire banking system.

The [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.] recently came out with the estimates. They think that there are $620 billion of unrealized losses, largely in the form of those bonds that have now changed in price, meaning that a lot of these banks—banks typically skirt along with a pretty low buffer between the deposits, which, for a bank, is debt, and the assets they hold. So $620 billion, there may be a lot more banks that are in trouble because of this.

Allen: On Monday, we saw that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, she wrote in a New York Times op-ed that these recent bank failures are the direct result of leaders in Washington weakening the financial rules. Do you agree with that? I mean, should we be looking to Washington to blame or is this just these bank leaders making poor decisions about where they’re putting investors’ money?

St Onge: Yeah, the pattern in this administration is that every time they break something, they get all the interns to go and find something somewhere that [former President] Donald Trump did.

So in this case, they’re grabbing at straws here. They’re trying to get this little archaic thing in the Dodd-Frank bill where, yeah, the definition of systemic risk. They’re playing games. What caused Silicon Valley Bank to collapse was that duration risk that, according to the FDIC, that would be the Biden FDIC, that’s what’s creating systemic risk here, that is what is.

All of the regulators in Washington right now are in a state of absolute panic because of those structural deficiencies that the Fed and the Treasury together planted into our financial system.

Allen: Now, I want to talk, in just a few minutes, a little bit more about what all of this means for the average American, for our bank accounts, and for the future of the economy. But let’s take a moment right now and talk about the steps that the Biden administration is taking and what’s happening.

So, [President Joe] Biden, he’s not bailing out the bank, but the Treasury Department says that they are taking steps to protect all depositors that had money sitting in Silicon Valley Bank. So they’re saying, though, the Biden administration says, taxpayers are not going to be on the hook for this. So where exactly is the money coming from in order to pay these depositors who are looking at massive financial loss?

St Onge: Right. So, that’s the trick. Every time that you have some sort of financial panic, they’re going to use depositors and businesses as human shields to try to get some kind of bailout. And that’s exactly what’s happening here.

So there are two different types of depositors in a bank. There are the small depositors, those who hold less than $250,000. That’s almost all the people in America. How many people have $250,000 cash sitting in the bank? All right? So all of those regular depositors, they are already covered under the FDIC, OK? No further bailout; no, nothing is needed; they are fine.

The issue here was that because Silicon Valley Bank was this country club bank, almost all of the money in that bank were large depositors, so over $250,000. Mark Cuban had $10 million. And so the issue here is that the Biden administration is proposing to bail out all of those big people, all of those rich people. And that would be a huge change in how our financial system works.

What it would functionally be doing is saying to banks, “Look, you guys can be as reckless as you want. You can play with equity stakes, you can play with yachts, you can do all these things, because don’t worry about it, we are going to cover everybody.”

The traditional way that our FDIC has worked is that it has said, “If bankers are riskless, then they’re going to suffer and the large depositors are going to suffer.” And the FDIC is going to take care of the widows and orphans, the regular people … middle class, working class, all right? That was the bargain on the FDIC. What they’re trying to change that into is they want to drain the FDIC, raid it of billions of dollars so that they can bail out rich people. All right? So that’s step one, what they’re proposing here. And then step two, what they’re proposing is that the Federal Reserve would then step in and lend.

Remember all those treasuries, all that money back in the vaults that has gone down 20% or 40%? What the Fed wants to do is step in and pretend that all those bad investments are still worth what they bought them for and they will lend on that. The reason they want to do that is that they want to bail out all of these reckless banks, all these banks that played with duration risk, that did not buy insurance, which is widely available. So they want to bail out everybody to come.

So, who’s going to pay for it? Step one is the FDIC is going to get raided. Now, the FDIC is your money. When you have money in the bank, the FDIC effectively taxes that every year. It’s like an insurance program, but you, the bank depositor, funded it. This did not come out of Wall Street billionaires’ pockets. The FDIC, that is your money.

So that’s the first step, is that they’re going to raid every other bank account in the United States and they’re going to use that to bail out the rich people in Silicon Valley Bank. Because remember, all the regular people are already covered. That’s not an issue, nobody disagrees with that. Issue here is to bail out the rich people. That’s step one.

Now, the problem is that the FDIC only has about $120 billion, and the total deposits in the U.S. are north of $20 trillion, it’s not much money. So what happens when the FDIC or if it runs out of money? Well, we know what happens because it happened in 2009. They went directly to Treasury and they said, “Hey, guys, we’re going to need some money.” All right, now, in that case, they gave them a $100 billion lending line, and it was temporarily back then, as in March of 2009, it was increased to $500 billion.

So what’s going to happen is, step one, they’re going to raid all of the bank accounts in America to pay off these country club boys. They take it out of FDIC by draining it out of all the other bank accounts. Step two, they then go to Treasury and they get Treasury to issue more debt. Now, remember, Treasury is already debt-limited, all right? In theory, they shouldn’t be playing these games, they shouldn’t be handing out $100 billion here, $500 billion there.

And then step three is that by encouraging, by bailing out banks, by encouraging to take these risks, you then raise the odds that we’re going to go back to the high inflation that the Fed’s been fighting in the first place.

So we can go back to square one and all of this, at the end of the day, then converts into a bailout that’s funded by taxpayers, by all bank depositors in America, including the small ones, and by inflation. So it comes out of your grocery bill.

Allen: So, Peter, I want to make sure I’m understanding this all correctly. So the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., they have a pool of money that’s set, the standard is to give $250,000 to individuals, to the small fish, when situations like this occur, when banks go belly up. And once you start going above that and lending out, they run the risk of running out of money. When that happens, then they go to the Treasury Department to say, “Hey, help us cover our costs.” Well, the money that the Treasury Department has is our tax dollars, is Americans’ money. And so, then, if that starts getting pulled on, that affects the larger economy as a whole. So in all likelihood, where does this path take us? What are the short-term and the long-term effects on the economy and on my money sitting in the bank?

Onge: Right. Short term, what we are certainly already seeing is that the Federal Reserve is already giving up the fight against inflation. They are scared, they have panicked, and so we are likely to go back down on interest rates. That will take some of the stress off the wider economy, but at that point, they really don’t have any way to fight inflation. They just use the standard inflation fighting playbook, which is choke the real economy.

And now, at this point, they have found that it’s a lot easier to break things than I think they expected. At this point, if they truly want to fight inflation, the only tool they have left is to reduce government spending. And that, of course, is the one thing they have not wanted to do. We at Heritage have been saying that since the beginning. The minute inflation took off, we said, “Don’t squeeze the real economy, you’ve got to cut government spending.” At this point, having run through the playbook, they’ve got nothing left.

So I think we’re very likely to see a lot more inflation. We are going to see these losses socialized. If the administration gets away with this, then we are going to start moving into a world where bankers, where Wall Street feels like they can take any risk they like, because this is all going to get bailed out because you’ve got these human shields.

And something important to remember is that in finance, risk always pays, risk return. If you are a bank, you will always make more money lending out riskier loans, buying riskier things. That is an iron rule of Wall Street. And so if we move into a world where the government is bailing out everybody, no matter how risky they were, we are inviting financial panic after financial panic.

Allen: And how similar is this situation to the financial crisis of 2008?

St Onge: It is very similar. What happened in 2008 is that a bunch of assets that were underpinning the banking system, so in other words, they were in the vault, called mortgage-backed securities, those were mispriced, OK? Everybody was pretending that they were one value, but they were actually worth less. So the dynamics of it are very similar.

I think what’s different here is that treasuries are even larger than MBSs were, mortgage-backed securities. The scale of the problem is bigger, the amount of debt that we have, both as a country and the financial system and in the government, the levels of debt are far higher than they were. So essentially, the risks that we had back then, that we have this giant almost Ponzi balanced very delicately waiting to topple over, those risks are all higher today. And the interventions that they’re proposing are actually more reckless than they were in 2008.

So I don’t think that we’re going to see a generalized bank panic here. The Federal Reserve has the ability to print unlimited money. I don’t think that this is the end of the republic or the end of the financial system. What I do think there’s a very big risk of is that Wall Street is going to get paid again. They’re going to break it and they are going to get trillions of dollars. The administration is already proposing that.

Allen: And what about the similarities specifically to TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, that we saw in 2008?

Onge: It’s very similar to that, what the Fed is doing. So they are basically stepping in and saying, “Look, I know you guys made all these bad bets, but we’re going to pretend that it never happened, we’re going to lend you money on that.” And you do that so that on paper, they all look like they’re solvent, even though they’re not really solvent.

So it would be like if you went to an individual and you said, “OK, I know that your bitcoin has lost half value, but you’re my friend, so I’m just going to pretend that it’s still worth the amount you paid for it.” That would, of course, be corrupt. And that is not something that regular people, we don’t get to do that. Only the powerful apparently get to do that.

And I think the wider risk here is that we want to keep in mind that bank failures occur all the time. They shouldn’t, but they do. They happen year in, year out. And what I think the market is looking at this, the financial markets, they’re looking at it, they’re saying, “Well, wait a minute. We always work out bank failures. Typically, the FDIC takes them, the large depositors take a haircut,” in other words, they lose some of their money, typically, about 15, 20 cents on the dollar. The small guys are protected. All right?

So FDIC knows how to do it, they do it all the time. Again, it’s sad that they do it all the time, but they do. And so it begs the question, what’s different here? Why this time are we moving heaven and earth to bail out everybody under the sun when bank failures happen all the time? And I think the answer that Wall Street’s going to walk away with is it’s starting to look like everybody is too big to fail. So that crushes community banks. Community banks might not have that pipeline, they do go down all the time. And when they fail, they fail alone. But in this case, what we’re seeing is that if you have rich depositors, if you have rich friends, if you’re a part of the in crowd, we will change all of the rules in order to bail you out.

Allen: President Joe Biden spoke at the White House on Monday and he said that the American people should feel confident in our banking system. Should we feel confident or is this just the first domino to fall in a possible coming financial crisis?

St Onge: In the banking system itself, I think that people can be confident. For better or for worse, they can bail out an absolutely unlimited number of financial institutions. That converts into inflation, potentially catastrophic inflation, very, very high inflation, we might see double-digit or higher inflation. So it is coming out of your pocket. However, in terms of the actual financial system collapsing, the only way that could happen is if they are absolutely incompetent in Washington. They know how to deal with bank failures, they cause them all the time, and they know how to work them out without crushing the system.

Allen: Is there any financial guidance that you would give to the American people who are a little bit worried about their money right now?

St Onge: Right. If your bank account is less than $250,000, you’re going to be fine. Those will be bailed out, they will be covered. If your securities account, like your Schwab account or something, those are also covered. They are going to cover all of those things. I don’t think that you have to take any assets out.

It’s a little trickier if you have a business, where you have a business account at the bank. Those historically were covered up to $250,000, which should be happening in this situation, is that the FDIC should essentially take over the bank. From your perspective, it would run normally, but you would eventually get a haircut on it. If you’re a small business owner, that is something to be aware of. But for regular people, they’re going to play shenanigans behind the scenes, but I believe your money will still be there.

Allen: Peter, we really appreciate your time today. For all of our listeners, if you want to read Peter’s reporting on this, you can find him at The Heritage Foundation website. You can also follow him on Twitter, @profstonge. And Peter, we just really appreciate your insight today.

St Onge: Thank you, it was enjoyable.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The post Who Are Winners and Losers in Biden’s Bailout of Silicon Valley Bank? Economist Explains appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Right must fight back in the information war waged by left-wing media, the editor-in-chief of The Federalist says, adding that conservatives should take their cues from how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis treats “false reporting.”

“Because they’re combining with Big Tech to suppress conservative publications and outlets, we need to treat it like the information war it is, fund the information war properly, and invest in those people that are pushing against the fake news [and] who care about actually reporting real news,” Mollie Hemingway told The Daily Signal.

There’s nothing “mainstream” about corporate media, she said, adding that what she calls “propaganda media” works against average Americans by pushing radical ideology, suppressing information about elections, and more.  

“They do not represent the views of average Americans by any stretch of the imagination,” she said. “They support really radical ideas, whether they’re economic or cultural that the vast majority of Americans, and even—in some cases—the vast majority of Democrats, don’t share.” 

Woke media outlets use euphemistic language, such as “gender-affirming care” and “preferred” personal pronouns, to frame gender issues, Hemingway says.  

“What that means is actual mutilation of healthy body parts or permanent sterilization of the reproductive system. It’s a criminally gross type of thing they’re talking about, but they use these euphemisms to describe it,” she said, adding:

People who want to be free need to fight very hard to make sure that they use proper words to describe reality. 

Left-wing media outlets do not represent the majority of American women, Hemingway said in explaining the positive media coverage of, for example, the Equal Rights Amendment, which would erase distinctions between males and females.  

“When conservative women destroyed the first attempt to pass this Equal Rights Amendment, they warned that denying the reality of distinctions between the sexes would be a bad thing for society,” she said.  

Most women want families, Hemingway said. 

“I think younger women are more aware of how the early waves of feminism were this false promise of happiness,” she said. “Over the last six or seven decades, women’s happiness has declined as men’s happiness has increased relative to women’s happiness. That makes sense, because what feminism teaches is false. It’s a false belief that not caring for family and not caring about having a family will make you happy, and that’s just not true.” 

The media coverage of pregnancy resource centers, which provide care to mothers in need, is also malpractice, she added.

“They just don’t actually accurately report what happens in a maternal care center—how much of it is about helping young women in the early stages of becoming mothers, not just about helping them avoid making a decision toward abortion,” she said, adding:

Abortion is one of those topics that is among the worst in terms of bias and deception from the media, the language they use, the terms they choose. They are very committed to supporting abortion, and it shows. 

Heading into the 2024 election, she said, candidates should not treat the lying media as legitimate.  

“[DeSantis] refuses to treat them like they are legitimate, because they are not legitimate,” Hemingway said. “He won’t give them press credentials to allow them to blow up his events. He always questions the assumptions behind their questions. He calls them out for their false reporting.”  

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we will consider publishing your remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature.   

The post ‘Not Legitimate’: Corporate Media Works Against Average American, Federalist Editor Says  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Another day, another tantrum at one of the nation’s top law schools. On Thursday, law students at Stanford (the No. 2 law school in the country) followed the example set by their peers at Yale (No. 1) by shouting down U.S. Circuit Court Judge Kyle Duncan, preventing him from delivering a lecture to other students who had invited him. 

Student members of The Federalist Society invited Duncan, who sits on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to talk about how the decisions of his court have affected Supreme Court decisions. He didn’t get the chance.

When liberal students heard that Duncan would speak on campus, they expressed their “upset and outrage” to Tirien Steinbach, the law school’s associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, who shared their feelings.

In an email, Steinbach wrote that Duncan “repeatedly and proudly threatened healthcare and basic rights for marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ people, Native Americans, immigrants, prisoners, Black voters, and women.”

This isn’t true, but an undeterred Steinbach said that “his presence on campus represents a significant hit to [students’] sense of belonging.”    

Steinbach said Stanford Law School supports the right of students to protest the event, but she promised that the school would not “censor Judge Duncan’s [sic], nor the students’ [sic] hosting him, nor stifle free speech by canceling this engagement.”

Before the event started, about 100 protesters jeered at 20 or so members of The Federalist Society as they entered the room. Inside, 50 to 70 protesters shouted insults and vulgarities at Duncan. (Many jeers were too vulgar to print, but you can read some here).

This continued for 20 to 30 minutes as the judge tried in vain to deliver his remarks.

‘What Does That Mean?’

Although the law school maintains a free speech policy that prohibits faculty, staff, and students from preventing or disrupting guest lectures, none of the five administrators present—including Steinbach; Jeanne Merino, acting associate dean of students; Megan Brown, student affairs program coordinator; and Holly Parrish, associate director of student affairs—intervened to enforce the policy.

To the contrary, when Duncan asked the administrators to do so, Steinbach took the microphone, opened a folio, and began reading from prepared remarks. For about six minutes, she excoriated the judge as protesters snapped their fingers and hollered in support.

The federal judge’s presence on campus, Steinbach said, was “tearing at the fabric of this community.” She accused him of taking away students’ rights, causing harm, and uttering speech that “literally denies the humanity of people.”

The protesters, she claimed, “are here to learn” but expect guests to “come with good intentions and respect.” She thanked the judge for “protecting the free speech that we value here” but asked several times: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” (You can read a transcript of Steinbach’s full remarks here, and watch the video here).

“What does that mean?” Duncan asked.

Steinbach replied that she was asking whether his presence and speech on campus is worth the “pain” and “division” that it causes. Perhaps, she suggested, the school should “reconsider” its free speech policy.

To Duncan, the event felt like “a setup.” Afterward, he likened it to a “therapy session from hell.”

Giving up on his remarks, Duncan said he would answer students’ questions. The students took the gesture as an invitation to hurl more insults at him.

Fed up, Duncan chastised them, saying: “You are all law students. You are supposed to have reasoned debate and hear the other side, not yell at those who disagree.”

In response, one student yelled: “You don’t believe that we have a right to exist, so we don’t believe you have the right to respect or to speak here!”

‘Grotesquely Unfair’

It seems that the protesters targeted Duncan because they perceive the judge as being hostile to progressive social causes.

In an email to its members at Stanford Law, the National Lawyers Guild—a left-wing group that helped to organize the protest—wrote: “Duncan’s record, jurisprudence, views, and personal conduct are beyond ‘disrespectful’: they are as antithetical to the social justice mission of NLG as it is possible to be.”

To date, no protester, Stanford administrator, or defender of their actions has argued that any of Duncan’s rulings were legally wrong. Rather, according to the National Lawyers Guild, its contempt for him stems from a “strong moral commitment” to progressive politics.

As unpleasant as this was, Duncan said later that “nobody should feel sorry for me.” Instead, the judge said he felt bad and outraged for Federalist Society students who invited him.

“They’re a small group, obviously way outnumbered,” Duncan said. “They are the ones who lack power and status at Stanford Law. It’s ridiculous that they can’t get treated with civility, and it’s grotesquely unfair.”

Incredibly, after the event, Steinbach told members of Stanford’s Federalist Society that protesters complied with the school’s free speech policy.

But later, Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez apologized to  Duncan, saying that “what happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech.”

Without mentioning Steinbach by name, Tessier-Lavigne and Martinez said that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways.”

The two assured the judge that they were “taking steps” to make sure such a thing doesn’t happen again. What those steps are, they didn’t say.

They also didn’t apologize to Federalist Society students, whose event was ruined by the protesters and administrators.

Stanford ‘at Its Best’?

Adding insult to injury, Merino, the acting associate dean of students, emailed Stanford Federalist Society leaders after the event “to support your safety and mental health.” She told them to reach out to therapists, any administrator from the Office of Student Affairs who was at the event, or—the kicker—Steinbach.

Merino also admonished the leaders not to talk about what happened on social media “until this news cycle winds down,” and to “consider removing your individual names from your [Stanford Law School] websites.”

One can’t help but get the feeling that Stanford is worried about upsetting a powerful federal judge and protecting its reputation, but not so concerned about creating what Steinbach would call “a culture of belonging” for its conservative, libertarian, and non-revolutionary liberal students.

As for the protesters, they’re celebrating their bad behavior as a great success. David Lat, who has interviewed current students and alumni, said the protesters are “unapologetic” and want Duncan to apologize to them.

For its part, the National Lawyers Guild said the student protesters “represented Stanford Law School at its best.”

That’s no mere bluster in the face of criticism; they sincerely believe it. Josh Blackman, an associate professor of law at the South Texas College of Law, explains that this arrogance is possible when a school’s department of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, supports students’ victim mentality:

When a university empowers DEI to deem speech ‘harmful,’ DEI will deem speech ‘harmful.’ … When a university teaches students that ‘harmful’  speech has no place on a campus, the students will take steps to prevent ‘harmful’ speech on their campus. This protest was a direct byproduct of what students have learned for years.

How to Respond

The last time a top law school (Yale) joined its radical students to stifle the free speech rights of other students and their guests, two prominent federal judges announced that they would not hire law clerks from the school (starting a few years from now so as to spare currently enrolled students).

That was deeply embarrassing for Yale’s law school, because placing students in clerkships is a major mark of a school’s success and prestige. As a result, Yale all but groveled for the judges’ forgiveness and committed to stronger free speech protections.

We’ll see if it lasts, but it’s a change for the better.

It also underscores that the only way to stop this problem is through appropriate punishment. Lessons about why free speech and rational debate are important to the practice of law will not work; these students are swept up in what they believe is a moral crusade.

Here are some more promising options:

First, Stanford should punish the students who protested and the administrators who did nothing. Duncan has called for Steinbach to be fired; she should be. It isn’t enough for Stanford’s president to rebuke unnamed “staff members” for failing to enforce the free speech policy. A few pink slips, on the other hand, might encourage those who remain to behave.    

Add to that more clerkship boycotts by federal judges. Law schools must be forced to specify the steps they’re taking to correct these incidents and to prove that they’re working. If two judges forced Yale to do that, a few more could improve the rest of the top schools.

In the meantime, the students of the Stanford Federalist Society should consider filing complaints with state bar examiners about the moral character of the protesters. Duncan is right: Lawyers can’t be both good at their or jobs and closed-minded zealots.

Finally, hiring managers at law firms should not hire any of those involved in such protests. Because many of the largest law firms and their larger clients are quite liberal, a hiring manager probably can’t speak out publicly against radical students. But quiet rejection is an option.

The names and pictures of many of the protesters have been reported. A quiet veto here, a tossed resume there—and some would-be protesters might catch on. Meantime, law firms will be spared from hiring new lawyers who lack the temperament and character to do the job well.

It’s time for rational people to stop pretending that the rules of polite society require them to tolerate this nonsense.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post That Tantrum at Stanford Law School and What to Do About It appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Virginia Education Association publishes ‘Black Lives Matter at School Toolkit’

A Virginia teachers’ union is pushing educators to defy a state ban on teaching critical race theory principles to children as young as five years old, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Virginia Education Association last month published a “Black Lives Matter at School Toolkit,” intended for elementary to high school students, for a “week of action,” a plan that flies in the face of an executive order from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R.) that prohibits critical race theory instruction, according to the Journal.

A spokesman for the governor told Fox News the program is “a political manual for the next generation of Virginia’s students.”

If a district superintendent does not support adding Black Lives Matter lessons to the curriculum, the Virginia Education Association recommends that educators “share the BLM toolkit with their school administrators, fellow educators, and school counselors.”

The association’s lesson plans borrow from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal advocacy organization. The program emphasizes “Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles,” which include “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics” and “a queer-affirming network where heteronormative thinking no longer exists.”

Virginia Education Association president James Fedderman acknowledged the program’s clash with the Youngkin administration but said in a statement to the Journal that the teachers’ union was “unapologetic in our support” of “racial justice.”

States such as Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma have also banned critical race theory curricula from schools. Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) in January moved to cut funding to critical race programs, saying that Florida school curricula “must be grounded in actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped Western civilization.”

The Montgomery County, Md., Board of Education announced in July its plan to teach concepts like “privilege” and “systemic racism,” also borrowing from Southern Poverty Law Center material, to elementary students. The board introduced the new curriculum as students’ math and language proficiency fell below district standards.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Appointment backlog means many migrants can remain in country for almost a decade before court date

Asylum claim appointments for migrants apprehended at the southern border are booked through 2032 at Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in New York City, according to an agency report reviewed by the New York Post.

The appointment backlog means many migrants can remain in the United States for almost a decade before they face immigration court to argue their case. The Biden administration released into the United States more than 800,000 non-citizens apprehended at the border between March 2021 and February 2023, according to the report, and New York City was the top destination for the immigrants.

The report comes as an immigration crisis unravels at the United States’ northern and southern borders. More than 5.5 million illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border since Biden took office, and more than 1.2 million have evaded law enforcement.

An 846 percent increase in migrants apprehended in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont pushed Customs and Border Protection to move at least two dozen agents from the southern border to the north. In January 2023, 367 migrants were apprehended, compared with 24 in January 2022.

New York City ICE faces at least 39,216 non-American citizen appointments as of mid-February, the Post reported. It’s the most congested jurisdiction in the country. Jacksonville, Fla., and Miramar, Fla., ranked second and third place, respectively, are both booked into 2028.

The Biden administration changed the processing system, adding stress on the New York system, the Post reported:

Historically, migrants who illegally crossed the southern border with asylum claims were issued a Notice to Appear (NTA) in immigration court.

But to cope with a record-breaking wave of new arrivals, the Biden administration in early 2021 added a new step and issued migrants a Notice to Report (NTR) to the ICE office near their final destination to get placed into court proceedings.

Authorities stopped issuing NTRs in late 2021 and imposed the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) “parole” program on most migrants released at the border, who generally submit to GPS tracking or reporting on a smartphone app.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A Denver news anchor scolded a mayoral candidate for calling the police after a homeless drug addict exposed himself and defecated in front of the candidate’s three-year-old daughter.

Speaking to local reporter Kyle Clark, Republican candidate Andy Rougeot recalled having to carry his crying daughter home after encountering “a man with his pants around his ankles, using [the park] as a restroom.”

“You call 911, call the non-emergency hotline, and nothing happens,” said Rougeout, who argued authorities can best serve Denver’s homeless population, and the broader community, by removing them from homeless encampments and “getting them the help they need.”

Clark pressed Rougeot on why he would “call 911 on somebody who’s going to the bathroom outdoors” before suggesting that the man “experiencing homelessness” likely just couldn’t find a public restroom. When Rougeot rattled off a list of public restrooms nearby and said that he could see the man using drugs, Clark simply pressed on and asked Rougeot again what he thought about adding more public restrooms in Denver.

The homeless man on drugs exposing himself and defecating in a children’s park in front of my 3-year-old daughter wasn’t doing it because he couldn’t find a public restroom #COPolitics #Denver https://t.co/mzpqMcVhjf

— Andy Rougeot (@AndyforDenver) March 9, 2023

Such is life for the sole Republican mayoral candidate in Denver, a progressive hub that has seen a corresponding rise in homeless encampments and public drug use. An Afghanistan veteran and small business owner, Rougeot is one of 19 candidates vying for the mayor’s office, none of whom are polling  at more than 5 percent. Nearly 60 percent of voters are undecided with only a few weeks left to go before the April 4 election, when they will pick their top candidates to head for a runoff.

According to Rougeot, the tense interview demonstrates what’s wrong with Colorado politics.

“It was amazing that a journalist like Kyle is acting like a man exposing himself to my daughter while defecating in a public park is acceptable, but a mayor who wants to enforce our laws is extreme,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. Denver voters are fed up with homeless encampments and crimes, Rougeot added, which he thinks could help him emerge victorious from the chaotic field.

Denver businesses have begun hiring private security to manage the crime associated with the rise of homelessness and street drug use, the Denver Post reported this week.

Clark, who conducted a series of interviews with mayoral candidates, found even some Democrats insufficiently progressive. Last week he also chided Aurelio Martinez for wanting to limit construction of subsidized housing blocs in Denver’s old neighborhoods and argued that allowing people to park their cars outside their homes was an unfair subsidy for car owners.

Clark took a considerably more amicable tone with progressive candidate Lisa Calderon, who has proposed legalizing homeless encampments, defunding the police, and making Denver more like San Francisco.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Citizen Action Wisconsin, which lobbies to end cash bail and abolish enforcement of drug crimes, endorsed Judge Janet Protasiewicz

The liberal candidate in Wisconsin’s high-stakes Supreme Court election is touting an endorsement from a radical anti-police group that wants to eliminate gang databases, treat criminals as juveniles until age 25, and says the state has a “structurally racist system of mass incarceration.”

Judge Janet Protasiewicz announced on social media that she “earned the endorsement” of Citizen Action Wisconsin after the activist group’s January candidate forum—she also has the endorsement from the group displayed on her campaign website. Citizen Action Wisconsin lobbies to end cash bail, which it describes as “punishment fees and fines,” abolish the enforcement of drug crimes, treat adult criminal suspects as juveniles up until age 25, and set a “10-year deadline for cutting the incarceration rate in half” in the state.

Protasiewicz’s embrace of Citizen Action Wisconsin could fuel attacks from her opponents that she is soft on crime. Fifty-seven percent of Wisconsin voters say they’re concerned about crime, and Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes lost in November after facing similar criticism over his ties to Citizen Action Wisconsin and other anti-police groups.

The nominally non-partisan Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which pits Democratic-backed candidate Protasiewicz against Republican-backed candidate Dan Kelly, is likely to be the most expensive in the country this year and could impact Wisconsin’s legislative map, abortion laws, and 2024 presidential election strategy in the swing state.

Citizen Action Wisconsin said it decided to back Protasiewicz and a second left-leaning judge—who lost the primary—after the two candidates participated in the group’s State Supreme Court forum earlier this year.

“In a highly democratic process, Citizen Action conducted a public candidate forum, gathered member feedback on the candidates, and had an extensive board deliberation which reached the conclusion,” said the group, adding that it was “deeply impressed by Judge Protasiewicz’s egalitarian judicial philosophy.”

During the forum, Protasiewicz warned that “everything from voter rights, everything from women’s reproductive rights, everything from marriage equality is on this line with this particular election.” But she also deviated from Citizen Action Wisconsin’s position on bail reform, saying she believed cash bail was “certainly necessary in some cases.”

Citizen Action Wisconsin is one of the most vocal critics of law enforcement in the state and claims that Wisconsin has a “structurally racist system of mass incarceration and biased policing.” The organization’s official platform calls for releasing all prisoners over a certain age, slashing policing budgets, and eliminating gang databases.

“Immediately release all elders, people in comas, life support, or end-of-life care from prisons and jails,” the group’s website said. “Always treat children as children by amending state law to eliminate criminal prosecution of youth under age 25 as adults.”

Citizen Action Wisconsin said the state should also “punish [police] departments that use public resources, such as communications staff and departmental social media feeds” to publish details about “protestors, those accused of crimes, and others who have come into disagreement or conflict with police.
”

In addition, the organization said police should be barred from arresting people who violate state-of-emergency curfews without “specific proof of violent intent”—unless the violators are “white supremisit groups [sic].”

In addition to its endorsement, Citizen Action Wisconsin recently launched an online fundraising campaign for Protasiewicz called the “Supreme Court Action Fund,” which it says has drawn over 1,000 individual donors.

Protasiewicz celebrated the group’s endorsement of her in a Twitter post in January.

“Together, we will take back our Supreme Court from right-wing extremists and restore independence to the judicial branch,” Protasiewicz wrote in the post.

Protasiewicz’s critics have pointed to her judicial record as evidence that she is soft on criminals. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business association, has been running an ad highlighting multiple convicted rapists and pedophiles who received light sentences from Protasiewicz.

In one 2019 case, Protasiewicz sentenced a child predator who assaulted an 11-year-old to probation. In another case in 2018, she also gave probation to a mother who allegedly starved her 16-year-old disabled son to death.

Protasiewicz’s campaign told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the criticism was “misleading” and said she spent “nearly a decade on the bench” and “held thousands of criminals accountable for their actions.”

Kelly, the conservative-backed candidate in the race, sat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 2016 to 2020. The election will take place on April 4.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Organization calls on Congress to cut firearms control funding in Biden’s budget

es (ATF) in President Joe Biden’s $6.8 trillion budget proposal for 2024.

“GOA [Gun Owners of America] is extremely concerned at the massive surge in ATF funding in recent years—doubling the size of the agency since the end of the Obama administration,” Aidan Johnston, GOA director of federal affairs, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

Biden’s budget proposal contains $1.9 billion for the ATF. This is a 13.6 percent increase over 2022 and $500 million more than the agency’s budget for fiscal year 2020.

If passed as written, Biden’s budget would expand the ATF by 35.7 percent—an overall growth of more than 50 percent since the Obama administration.

According to Biden’s plan, the $1.9 billion would finance the expansion of multi-jurisdictional gun trafficking strike forces, increase firearms industry regulation, and implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

The proposal also calls for $51 million for the FBI to complete implementing the enhanced background check system that is part of the act.

GOA stated that the budget items are nothing more than incremental gun control that will make no one safer but will deny law-abiding gun owners their constitutional rights.

The organization is especially alarmed at funding for “crisis intervention programs,” so-called red flag laws.

GOA and other gun rights groups claim that red flag laws set the stage for authorities to confiscate firearms without due process.

The act calls for due process “at the appropriate phase” of the process to avoid violating a person’s constitutional rights, but the organization points out that the law doesn’t specify when that phase is, leaving open the possibility that the appropriate phase may come after a person’s firearms have already been confiscated.

“GOA analyzed the Biden administration’s disbursal of ‘Red Flag’ gun confiscation grants pursuant to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and found that the ‘due process’ protections … were worthless,” the group’s statement reads.

It also claims that the ATF uses a “zero tolerance” policy to build an unconstitutional gun registry. GOA obtained an internal policy memo in which ATF officials explain how to shut down law-abiding gun shops for minor infractions.

‘Funding Should be Restricted’

When a shop closes, all its sales records are transferred to the government. GOA claimed that the ATF has aggregated these records into a central gun registry to track all firearms, whether they’ve been used in a crime or not.

In his email to The Epoch Times, Johnston said Congress should rein in the ATF immediately.

“Funding should be restricted to alcohol, tobacco, explosives, and only violent firearm crimes—meaning the agency should be prohibited from going after peaceful gun owners for non-violent gun control violations,” Johnston wrote.

According to the GOA statement, recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings may offer some protection.

“Laws restricting the rights of legal adults are rightly beginning to be struck down as unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s ‘text, history, and tradition’ Second Amendment test as affirmed in DC v. Heller and NYSRPA v. Bruen,” the statement reads.

A spokesperson for the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

UNTOUCHABLE: Middle School Teacher BOASTS ‘Tenured’ Educators Should Use Status to Promote Sexual Child Grooming as Young as ‘Two or Three Years Old’; ‘Kids Are Coming Out at Younger and Younger Ages’ … ‘Plethora of Queer Flags That I Have in My Classroom’

• Elisa Waters, Founder of LGBTeach, Spanish & Social Justice Teacher, Jericho Middle School: “The truth is that we know that kids are coming out at younger and younger ages…We have kids as early as two, three years of age.”
• Waters: “Even though I’m not an Elementary-level educator, it’s probably my favorite group to work with — working with staff and admin, because if we could actually do more of this conversation with Elementary-aged kids, by the time they get to me in Middle School, or some of you in High School, we’ll be in a better place…The more we can do at the Elementary level – breaking down the gender binary, getting rid of girls and boys…”
• Waters: “I particularly love working with families and helping them, you know, practicing, you know, affirmation through their children’s journey of sexuality and gender.”
• Waters: “I always tell untenured teachers, ‘You’re going to have more longevity making change if you maybe play it a little safer for a little longer’…Lean on your tenured colleagues to do some of this work because we need you.”
• Waters: “I always say — and I’m not saying don’t do the work — but do it with caution, because if you’re sitting here right now, it means in three to four years when you get that tenured seat, then you can do even more work.”
• Janna Nunziato, Social Studies Teacher, H.B. Thompson Middle School: “The kids — they don’t mind [gender talk]. I think they’re used to it because they all have TikTok. They all have Instagram where they have to put their pronouns now. They’re all used to it. So, it’s really, unfortunately, I think it’s the parents.”

[NEW YORK – Mar. 13, 2023] Project Veritas released its third video today exposing the sexual indoctrination of young children taking place in schools across the state of New York.

Elisa Waters, who is the founder of LGBTeach as well as a Middle School teacher in Long Island, was recorded bragging about how she pushes gender ideology in the classroom.

“The truth is that we know that kids are coming out at younger and younger ages…We have kids as early as two, three years of age,” Waters said.

“Even though I’m not an Elementary-level educator, it’s probably my favorite group to work with — working with staff and admin, because if we could actually do more of this conversation with Elementary-aged kids, by the time they get to me in Middle School, or some of you in High School, we’ll be in a better place,” she said.

“I particularly love working with families and helping them, you know, practicing, you know, affirmation through their children’s journey of sexuality and gender.”

Waters instructed other educators on how to effectively push this agenda onto their students.

“I always tell untenured teachers, ‘You’re going to have more longevity making change if you maybe play it a little safer for a little longer’…Lean on your tenured colleagues to do some of this work because we need you,” she said.

“I always say — and I’m not saying don’t do the work — but do it with caution, because if you’re sitting here right now, it means in three to four years when you get that tenured seat, then you can do even more work.”

A teacher becomes tenured after working for several years in a teaching capacity, making it more difficult for school administrators to act against the teacher when they behave inappropriately over time.

Joseph Wiener, the Principal of Wheatley School who has worked with Waters, shared his thoughts about her to a Veritas journalist.

“She lives that activism and that purpose every minute of every day,” he said.

Wiener also talked about his own methods for political activism in school.

“We brought in speakers who taught kids how to be anti-racist, and you know, kind of define, ‘What does it mean to be an anti-racist?’ And parents would say, ‘You’re indoctrinating my child. We don’t believe–’ Wait, you don’t believe in being anti-racist?”

The principal affirmed that there is no middle ground when it comes to the conversation around racism.

“That speaker who we had, that anti-racist guest speaker said, ‘You’re either racist or you’re anti-racist,’” Wiener said.

“There’s no in-between. If you’re not doing anti-racist work, then you are contributing to racial divide.”

SOURCE: Project Veritas

THE TIMING OF THE CONTRACTS IS CERTAINLY… ODD.

Federal spending records indicate the U.S. Embassy in Beijing purchased internet service from China Unicom, a state-owned firm banned in the United States for national security reasons, and concerns over espionage.

Records indicate the sensitive White House communications during President Trump’s state visit to China, as well as ongoing State Department communications with the Biden White House may also be compromised, The National Pulse can reveal.

White House Compromised?

On October 26, 2017, a contract for “WHCA data and phone lines” was awarded to China Unicom Beijing Branch. WHCA is the acronym for the White House Communications Agency. The funding agency for this contract is listed as the Defense Information Systems Agency. The description listed on another contract dated the following day reads, “Beijing POTUS WHCA data and voice lines.” That is, “Beijing President of the United States White House Communications Agency (WHCA) Data and Voice Lines.” A third contract for WHCA data and phone lines was awarded November 1, 2017.

These contracts are significant because just days after, on November 8-10, 2017, President Trump visited Beijing on an official state visit. Indeed the contracts appear to be directly linked to Trump’s tenure as President, beginning just after he was inaugurated, and ending soon after he left office, suggesting the man and his communications were the target of Chinese spying, aided by State Department apparatchiks. 

Following this, a contract was awarded to China Unicom (2019) for an “OpenNet P2P circuit” between Beijing and the White House. OpenNet is a “Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) network” operated by the State Department for email and data applications. Another such contract was made in late 2021 for a connection between Beijing and the Biden White House.

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, contracts (2019 and 2020) were awarded to China Unicom for upgrades to the State Department’s OpenNet communications network and internet service in Wuhan. The State Department also maintains a consulate in Wuhan.

China Unicom – or the China United Network Communications Group Co., Ltd – was founded in the early 1990s by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). To this day, China Unicom’s key figures are also high ranking members of the CCP’s party committee and political leadership.

In 2020, the Guardian newspaper reported: “China appears to have used mobile phone networks in the Caribbean to surveil US mobile phone subscribers as part of its espionage campaign against Americans, according to a mobile network security expert who has analysed sensitive signals data.”

Around the same time, authorities in the U.S. were attempting to restrict the reach of China Unicom inside the United States, including the company being named by the Department of Defense as part of an investigation into the “People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernization goals of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities.”

The Federal Communications Commission finally “banned” China Unicom in 2022.

Who’s Responsible?

Despite its recent activities, the U.S. State Department took part in some 60 transactions totalling over $2.5 million to China Unicom between 2017 and 2023. The federal spending database also lists China Unicom, a state-owned enterprise, as a “minority-owned business”.

MUST READ: NY’s Young Republicans Lead The Way Again With Peaceful Pro-Trump Protest in Lower Manhattan.

In previous reporting, the National Pulse revealed Nick Burns, the current U.S. Ambassador to China, worked at a CCP-linked consulting firm, and a Harvard group advising China’s military. Another National Pulse story revealed Ambassador Burns headlining an event sponsored by the U.S.-China Heartland Association (USCHA), a Chinese Communist Party-linked foreign influence group targeting American farmers and farmland.

Burns’s predecessor, former Governor of Iowa Terry Branstad, first met Xi Jinping in 1985 and has referred to the communist dictator as an “old friend.” Since leaving his post as ambassador, Branstad has formed a consulting group geared toward businesses and organizations looking to do business in China and the United States.

Sanctions Upon Sanctions.

On June 17, 2020, the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector recommended to the FCC that an application from a company called Pacific Light Cable Network for an undersea cable link between Hong Kong and the United State be denied.The recommendation was based partly on the company’s “relationship with PRC intelligence and security services” and for its “connections to PRC state-owned carrier China Unicom.”

On August 28, 2020, the Defense Department added China Unicom to a list of “Communist Chinese Military Companies” operating in the United States.

Following this action, President Trump issued an executive order on November 12, 2020 “Addressing the Threat from Securities Investments that Finance Communist Chinese Military Companies.”

On December 8, 2020, the State Department issued a fact sheet entitled, “U.S. Investors Are Funding Malign PRC Companies on Major Indices,” which listed China Unicom as one of those malign companies, even though their own embassy in Beijing was utilizing their services. 

On January 7, 2021, China Unicom was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange following President Trump’s executive order.

A State Department fact sheet issued on January 14, 2021, again discussed the threat posed by China Unicom, among other PRC companies.

President Biden revised President Trump’s executive order on June 3, 2021, however China Unicom remained under restriction after the revision.

On December 16, 2021, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control released an updated list of Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies, which continued to designate China Unicom as such.

On January 27, 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoked China Unicom’s authority to provide telecom services in the United States. 

On September 20, 2022, the FCC added China Unicom to the “List of Equipment and Services Covered by Section 2 of The Secure Networks Act.” The release stated that China Unicom is “subject to the exploitation, influence and control of the Chinese government, and the national security risks associated with such exploitation, influence, and control.”

The FCC document goes on to state that the DOJ, DOD, and Executive Branch all concur that services provided by China Unicom “involve communications services that pose ‘an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons’ under section 2 of the Secure Networks Act—thus requiring the addition of these services to the Covered List.”

MUST READ: NY’s Young Republicans Lead The Way Again With Peaceful Pro-Trump Protest in Lower Manhattan.

The FCC public notice furthermore states:

“With respect to China Unicom, the Executive Branch entities found that the United States national security environment, including increased concern about malicious cyber activities taken at the direction of the Government of the PRC, has changed significantly since 2002, when the Commission certified the international section 214 authorization of China Unicom to provide international common carrier services; that China Unicom’s status as a wholly-owned subsidiary of a PRC state-owned enterprise firmly places it under the exploitation, control, and influence of the Chinese government; that China Unicom has continuing and ongoing commercial relationships with Chinese entities accused of engaging in activities contrary to American national security and economic interests; and that China Unicom’s American operations provide opportunity to facilitate Chinese cyber activities including economic espionage, disruption and misrouting of American communications traffic, and access to U.S. records and other sensitive data. Accordingly, based on these findings, the Executive Branch entities have determined that services provided by China Unicom associated with its international section 214 authorization pose a substantial and unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States and its people.”

And yet, just three months later, despite all of these very explicit warnings, and contrary to U.S. Government sanctions, the State Department signed another contract with China Unicom on December 27, 2022 for “OpenNet P2P circuit between BJ and WH 2023.” That is a communications link between Beijing and the White House.

Beijing Rules.

When the United States began building a new embassy in Moscow in 1979, they used Soviet workers and materials for construction. In 1985, construction was halted. The partially-completed American embassy in Moscow was found to be so compromised by electronic surveillance devices that it was dubbed “the bug house.” Recommendations were made to tear it down and start over. Ultimately, part of the building was torn down and construction was completed years later, using American-supplied materials and workers.

Now, the government is once again contracting foreign technical assistance for something they should be able to do themselves and is essentially paying an enemy intelligence service to bug their embassy. 

One would think that the United States Government would have sufficient technology to install their own secure internet service using encrypted satellites, without relying on a CCP-owned company that has been banned in the homeland as an espionage threat. One would also think that such an arrangement should be immediately undone and that any potential compromise of our systems in Beijing and elsewhere in China should be investigated forthwith by the relevant counterintelligence agencies.

Even if the networks in question were encrypted, an ISP can glean useful metadata for cyber targeting. The National Pulse recently reported that the Defense Department has been purchasing vulnerable Chinese network equipment for use on sensitive bases.

During the Cold War, the CIA developed what it called “The Moscow Rules,” referring to the tradecraft needed to navigate the dangerous environment clandestine operatives faced in the Soviet capital. Perhaps a set of “Beijing Rules” should be developed as well. One basic and obvious rule should be not to hire the CCP to install your internet service.

Legislative efforts to enable Americans to sue the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the COVID-19 pandemic have been renewed on Capitol Hill by Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Michael Burgess (R-Texas).

Under legislation the congressmen introduced on March 10, the Chinese communist regime could be held legally liable for misrepresenting “the seriousness and nature” of the novel coronavirus to the World Health Organization, resulting in “loss of life, injury, and damage to property and commercial interests” of people around the world.

“Knowing that Xi Jinping and his communist regime systematically failed to be truthful and transparent, our legislation seeks to not only gain access to more information but also provide much-needed relief to the loved ones of those who died and others who have suffered severe economic loss during the pandemic,” Smith, chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said in a statement.

The bill comes amid increasing calls for government transparency on COVID-19 following reports that both the FBI and the U.S. Department of Energy believe the source of the pandemic to have been a lab leak at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology—a theory that was largely discouraged and dismissed by government agencies until recently.

Another supporter of that theory is Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who told members of Congress on March 8 that he believed that U.S. taxpayers had funded the gain-of-function research that created the virus.

“We must finally get to the truth about what happened and who was involved in this deception in order to bring justice to those who suffered profoundly from COVID-19,” Smith said, noting that the legislation would also allow for additional answers to be produced through discovery and testimony in court.

Republican senators launched a similar effort to hold China legally liable for COVID-19 in 2020 by introducing the Civil Justice for Victims of COVID Act, but that bill was never taken up for a vote.

However, Burgess said it was time for the CCP to be held accountable.

“The Chinese Communist Party refusal to provide real-time information killed Americans,” he said. “The American people lost loved ones and suffered a multitude of losses during the coronavirus pandemic. They deserve the ability to get answers from the CCP.”

To date, more than 6.8 million people around the world have died because of COVID-19, including nearly 1 million Americans.

In a rare moment of total agreement, both congressional chambers unanimously passed legislation this month requiring the director of national intelligence to declassify information about the origins of the pandemic.

The bill has yet to be signed by Joe Biden.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A key COVID-19 vaccine case is moving to the discovery phase after a U.S. judge rejected a bid by Moderna to dismiss some of the patent infringement claims against it.

Moderna and the U.S. government, which backed the company, failed to prove that claims involving the company’s COVID-19 vaccine contract with the government should be dismissed, U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg ruled on March 10.

Goldberg in late 2022 rejected a similar effort but Moderna revived its bid after the government filed a statement asserting it, not the company, should face the claims relating to the contract.

The parties, though, have failed to prove that the government’s interpretation “trumps a court’s analysis of this issue,” Goldberg said.

Moderna and the government had argued that under 28 U.S.C. 1498, the claims should be dismissed and moved to the Court of Federal Claims. That would mean the government was inserted as the defendant, replacing Moderna, and leave the government responsible for paying any damages awarded.

The law in question states that any infringement claims relating to inventions being used “by or for the government” and with “the authorization and consent of the government” must be handled in the Court of Federal Claims.

The 2020 vaccine contract between Moderna and the U.S. Army stated that it was “for the United States government … and the U.S. population.”

While Moderna and the government said that evidence supported the contract being “by or for the government,” Arbutus Biopharma and Genevant Sciences said the dispute “can only be resolved on a fully developed record” and urged the court to allow discovery.

Goldberg, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed.

“I will consider the [Section] 1498(a) issue after both parties have engaged in discovery, which will provide Plaintiff an opportunity to review the entire unredacted version of the ’-0100 Contract and discover facts regarding that Contract,” he said.

New Developments Highlight Need for Discovery

New developments in the case highlight the need for discovery, the judge said.

The original contract, or the ’-0100 Contract, was for the government, both Moderna and U.S. officials say. But the parties have also acknowledged that a second contract, reached in 2022 and known as the ’-0017 contract, doesn’t fall under the law because it lacks certain language.

The position on the second contract wasn’t known when the judge ruled in 2022 on the motion to dismiss.

“Had I granted the relief Moderna sought in its original motion to dismiss, this fact would not have come to light and the relief ordered could have been incorrect,” the judge said.

“Discovery is necessary to ensure that any application of [Section] 1498(a) is based upon developed facts and not solely on the Government’s say-so.”

Even if the judge had ruled in favor of Moderna, proceedings related to the second contract would likely have moved forward in U.S. District Court in Delaware, where the judge is based and where the lawsuit was filed.

The government helped develop Moderna’s vaccine and has started receiving royalty payments.

Patent Infringement

Arbutus and Genevant sued Moderna in March 2022, asserting the company used technology Arbutus had already patented.

That included a lipid nanoparticle system used by the COVID-19 vaccine to deliver spike protein into the body.

Moderna was aware of the patents and even tried to license them for other products, according to the lawsuit. Moderna didn’t try to license the technology for its COVID-19 vaccine, instead attempting to invalidate the patents and, when those efforts failed, using the patented technology anyway.

Moderna has denied the claims, describing its vaccine as “a product of Moderna’s many years of pioneering mRNA platform research and development, including creation of our own proprietary lipid nanoparticle delivery technology.”

The Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines utilize messenger RNA, or mRNA, platforms.

Other Cases

Several other patent infringement claims have been lodged over the vaccines, which have yielded billions of dollars for Moderna and Pfizer.

In one case, Moderna sued Pfizer, alleging Pfizer used technology it had developed.

That case, overseen by U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns, has also moved to the discovery phase. Discovery will be completed by Dec. 13, according to a scheduling order entered by Stearns, a Clinton appointee.

CureVac, a German company, in 2022 sued Pfizer partner BioNTech, asserting it had developed proprietary technology utilized by the companies’ vaccines.

“CureVac’s intellectual property rights need to be acknowledged and respected in the form of a fair compensation to reinvest into the further advancement of mRNA technology and the ongoing development of new classes of life saving medicines,” the company said at the time.

Pfizer and BioNTech then sued CureVac in the United States, alleging the latter was trying to profit from their successful vaccine.

CureVac announced in 2021 it was abandoning its experimental COVID-19 vaccine, which was also based on mRNA technology, shifting its focus to a collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline on second-generation vaccine candidates. The firms have since said the vaccine performed well in early trials, but it’s still in development.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

COVID-19 could have been the result of risky experiments at a laboratory in China, Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged in an interview over the weekend.

“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab, and was being studied in a lab, and then came out of the lab,” said Fauci, the former director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “The other possibility is someone takes a virus from the environment that doesn’t actually spread very well in humans, and manipulates it a bit, and accidentally it escapes or accidentally infects someone and then you get an outbreak.”

The first COVID-19 cases were detected in 2019 in Wuhan, China, where a high-level laboratory is located. Scientists at the lab were funded in part by the NIAID.

Fauci, speaking on CNN, claimed that he’s “kept an open mind” as to the origin of COVID-19. However, he was involved in a paper that alleged in early 2020 that said SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” and cited the paper from the White House when asserting the virus had a natural origin.

While a number of experts told Fauci privately around that time that characteristics of the virus pointed to it being engineered, evidence that later emerged strongly suggested a natural origin, including two 2022 papers in Science magazine, Fauci said on March 11.

“But strongly suggesting, Jim, doesn’t nail it down definitively, and that’s the reason why I say to this day that I will keep a completely open mind as to what the origin is,” Fauci said.

Neither Fauci nor other natural origin theory proponents have identified an animal host, which is necessary to establish their position.

Chinese authorities, meanwhile, have blocked investigators from the Wuhan lab, which was cut off from U.S. funding after not sharing data with U.S. officials.

Some U.S. intelligence agencies say the current evidence supports the origin being a laboratory-associated incident, while others are in favor of the natural origin theory.

While lab accidents have occurred in the past, no lab leaks have led to pandemics, Fauci said.

“There have been accidents in a lab, that happens intermittently—we’ve had experience with that in modern times—but there has never been a situation where a virus escaped from a lab, that’s a brand new virus—that no one has ever seen before—that’s led to a pandemic,” he said. “That’s never happened.”

CNN did not ask Fauci about a newly published email that said he “prompted” the drafting of the 2020 paper.

Fauci was speaking after Dr. Robert Redfield, the former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a congressional panel that the evidence points to the Wuhan lab.

Redfield cited how the Wuhan lab deleted sequences, how the lab was under military control, and how a contractor redid the ventilation system there.

“There is strong evidence there was a significant event in that laboratory in September 2019,” he said.

Reaction to Calls for Prosecution

On CNN, Fauci also reacted to calls to prosecute him over false statements he’s made.

“There’s no response to that craziness,” Fauci said.

“I mean, prosecute me for what? What are they talking about? I mean, I wish I could figure out what the heck they were talking about. I think they’re just going off the deep end,” he added.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has referred Fauci for prosecution for telling members of Congress that the United States did not fund gain-of-function research in China despite documents being made public that experts say show that U.S.-funded experiments led to a gain of function in a bat coronavirus.

The U.S. Department of Justice has not charged Fauci, who left office around the New Year.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk is among others who have called for the prosecution of Fauci, while Republican lawmakers, now in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, have vowed to investigate him.

Such statements have “a difficult effect and a deleterious effect on my family,” Fauci said. “I mean, they don’t like to have me getting death threats all the time. Every time somebody gets up and spouts some nonsense, that’s misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies, somebody somewhere decides they want to do harm to me and/or my family. So that’s the part about it that is really unfortunate.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Biden’s FAA pick Phil Washington knows nothing about aviation safety.

r. Washington, can you quickly tell me what kind of airspace requires an ADS-B transponder?” said Senator Ted Budd in a March 1 hearing with Phillip Washington, Joe Biden’s pick to head the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

“Not sure I can answer that question right now,” said Washington. Budd said the answer was a “pretty important part” but quickly moved on. 

“What are the six types of special-use airspace that protect this national security that appear on FAA charts?”

“Sorry senator,” Washington said. “I cannot answer that question.” Budd duly advanced another. 

“What are the operational limitations of a pilot flying under basic med?”

“Senator I’m not a pilot so . . .”

“Obviously you’d oversee the Federal Aviation Administration,” countered Budd, “so any idea what any of those restrictions are under basic med?”

“Well, some of the restrictions, I think, would be high blood pressure.” 

As Senator Budd explained, the restrictions had to do with the number of passengers per airplane, weight, altitude, and speed. So “it doesn’t have anything to do with blood pressure.” 

Budd pressed on. “Can you tell me what causes an aircraft to spin or to stall?”

“Again senator I’m not a pilot,” Washington responded. Budd then wondered if the Biden nominee knew the three certifications the FAA requires as part of the manufacturing process.

“Again what I would say, one of my first priorities would be to fully implement the certification act.” Budd wanted to know if the nominee could specifically name the three types of FAA certification. 

“No,” Washington said. Budd helpfully identified them as “type certificate, production certificate, airworthiness certificate,” adding “let’s just keep going, see if we can get lucky here.”

“Can you tell me what the minimum separation distance is for landing and departing airliners during the daytime?”

“I don’t want to guess on that, senator,” the Biden FAA nominee said. Budd then asked Washington if he was familiar with the difference between FAA regulations 107 and part 44809 regarding unmanned aircraft such as drones.

“Yes,” said the nominee, but when Budd pressed him on the difference, Washington said “I cannot spell that out.” 

For all but the willfully blind, the Biden pick is unqualified to head the FAA. So the people have a right to wonder how he got tapped for the job. 

In 2020, “Washington led Biden’s transition team for the Transportation Department,” notes National Public Radio. The Delaware Democrat first nominated Washington in early July, 2022, “but he failed to get a hearing even though Democrats controlled the Senate.” Biden re-nominated Washington in January, so it’s pretty clear the FAA was a reward for service to Biden. 

Phillip Washington earned a B.A. in Business from Columbia College, and an M.A. in Management from Webster University. The Army veteran has experience in transportation but nothing specifically in aviation. 

The Biden pick told the Senate Commerce Committee that safety would be his top priority. If the nominee engaged in any study or preparation it wasn’t evident on March 1. As it happens, that dismal performance was not the only concern.

Washington headed the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for six years. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department wanted to know why the authority awarded a no-bid “sole-source” contract for a sexual harassment hotline to the Peace Over Violence organization. Phillip Washington was the subject of a search warrant and so was LA County Supervisor Sheila Keuhl, a close friend of Peace Over Violence CEO Patti Giggins, and one once a national figure of sorts.

Born in 1941, Keuhl was an actress on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” on television from 1959 to 1963.  Keuhl played Zelda Gilroy, a rival to Thalia Menninger (Tuesday Weld) for the affections of Dobie, played by Dwayne Hickman. Weld and others in the cast carried on in show business but Keuhl opted for law school and politics. 

Keuhl served in the California State Assembly from 1994-2000 and the state Senate from 2000-2008. Sen. Keuhl authored a bill for a massive government monopoly health care system (SB 840) that was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Keuhl said the governor was “angry” and “childish.” For her part, the former actress never became a political star on the national scene. 

Keuhl moved on to the LA Board of Supervisors and also served on the LA Metro Transportation Board. She claimed the no-bid Peace Over Violence contract did not involve her and called the search a “thuggish attempt to intimidate and silence not just me but many other public servants.” Phil Washington told reporters “all the allegations are false,”  but the matter did not end there.

Senator Ted Cruz cited “serious concerns regarding outstanding allegations of misconduct going back to Mr. Washington’s time at LA Metro. He was named in multiple search warrants in an ongoing criminal public corruption investigation and was the subject of multiple whistleblower complaints.” Washington was also named in a discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by a former Denver airport employee. 

As Cruz noted, the nominee’s failure to notify the committee of that lawsuit was one of “dozens of omissions” in his questionnaire. In Denver, Washington had stressed “sociocultural merits” and on March 1, despite ample time to prepare, the nominee failed to answer basic questions about airport safety. For Biden, Washington was fully qualified, and in a sense the Delaware Democrat is right. 

At all levels the various boards and commissions serve as soft landing spots for failed politicians, party hacks and bureaucrats. Witness the pathetic Pete Buttigieg, on “paternity leave” during a supply-chain crisis, and ignoring a toxic train derailment in Ohio. In similar style, Biden labor secretary nominee Julie Su enabled billions in unemployment fraud and supports the elimination of independent freelance workers. 

California’s High Speed Rail Authority has yet to carry a passenger, but its board is home to Lynn Schenk, a former member of Congress and chief of staff to California Governor Gray Davis. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s stem-cell institute, hired former state senator Art Torres, a lawyer—this despite the fact that a person with biomedical experience was willing to serve for no salary. Torres, a Democrat, also serves on the board of Covered California, a wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacare. And so on. 

Biden FAA nominee Phillip Washington said he wasn’t a pilot and that proves revealing. Before they are allowed to fly airliners with hundreds of passengers, pilots must pass the most rigorous medical and aviation safety tests. Consider, for example, Chesley Sullenberger, captain of US Airways flight 1549.

On January 15, 2009, after a bird strike shut down his engines, captain “Sully” safely landed an Airbus A320 on the Hudson River, saving the lives of everybody on board, 155 people all told. The Federal Aviation Administration quickly charged that Sullengerger should have turned back to La Guardia, in which case, as accurate simulations confirmed, the plane would have crashed and 155 people would have died.  

Pilot Sullenberger was more concerned about saving lives than the regulations of bureaucrats of the FAA. Under the unqualified Phillip Washington, that body would be even more wasteful and ineffective than it already is. The Senate has plenty to ponder, and if anybody thought Joe Biden doesn’t care about the safety of the people it would be hard to blame them. 

SOURCE: American Greatness

REVIEW: ‘Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation’

A teacher testified before the Arizona state Senate education committee earlier this month and claimed that she and her colleagues knew better than parents what books belonged on school library shelves. “I have a master’s degree,” she said. “What do the parents have?” In the video, now widely circulated on Twitter, she continued, “The purpose of public education is not to teach only what parents want [students] to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to be taught.”

Parents were sidelined when, at the onset of the pandemic, they began raising concerns about the long-term impacts of school closures and mask mandates. After being branded as racist bigots for wanting schools to reopen—most infamously by the Chicago Teachers Union—we now know that half of American students are one grade level behind in at least one subject area because of school closures.

The silver lining of virtual learning was that it gave parents unprecedented access to their kids’ classrooms. Parents began seeing just how far divisive race ideology had permeated, through “antiracist” math lessons, discussions on “whiteness” and race-based privilege and oppression, and history teachers telling students that America was founded on racism. Parents sounded the alarm bells, and they were again mocked for doing so. Such concepts, according to “the experts,” are only taught in graduate school.

We know, to a much greater extent than in March 2020, that divisive ideas about race and gender are pervasive across our institutions—K-12 and higher education, medicine, the media. And in the face of endless pushback, three years later, moms and dads are still fighting because they know what’s at stake: their children.

Karol Markowicz, a New York Post columnist, and Bethany Mandel, who writes a column for Fox News and edits children’s books, rightly dedicate most of Stolen Youth to discussing how divisive race ideology—which they call “critical race theory” or “wokeism”—crept into public education and government responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

While parents were told to “listen to the science,” racial justice protesters were applauded for gathering en masse because medical experts deemed that systemic racism posed a greater threat to public health than the coronavirus pandemic. Hypocritically, the authors note, the national focus on racial disparities completely excluded the challenges that students, including minority students, faced during pandemic lockdowns. Black and Hispanic students remained online for longer periods of time and sustained greater academic setbacks in math and reading early on in the pandemic. The push for “equity,” even in schools, overlooked these students. Further, the “equitable” practices implemented in schools often hurt the very students they claimed to serve. Markowicz (who, in full disclosure, is a board member of my employer, Parents Defending Education) notes a case in Seattle Public Schools where a shift toward ethnic-studies-focused math education actually reduced performance rates for black students in the district. But those who wanted to reopen schools—and preserve quality education for all students—were the bad guys.

After witnessing what was happening in schools, parents and some reporters outside of the mainstream began uncovering divisive race and gender ideology in other institutions. The Disney corporation is a prime example. Last year, its executives admonished the passage of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which banned classroom discussions about sexual orientation and “gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade. More disturbing was a subsequently released video in which a producer touted her “not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” which included “adding queerness” in children’s movies wherever she wanted, “and no one was trying to stop [her].”

Even worse, activists have embedded race and gender ideology into the field of medicine: Medical schools now require applicants to submit essays about their experiences with “implicit bias” or their dedication to social justice-focused political activities and “equitable patient care.” America’s future doctors are being selected because of their commitment to “equity,” not for their academic abilities.

Throughout these chapters, Markowicz and Mandel draw numerous parallels between American leftists and the “thought police” under Hitler, Mao, and Stalin. But the shifts from divisive race ideology in schools to Hitler Youth, and from Scholastic’s books to Mao’s and Stalin’s culture ministers, can be a bit abrupt. Noting relevant points in American history may have better served the reader than drawing broad parallels to history. Conservatives rightly hate when the left throws around terms like “Nazi” and “genocide.” While this book doesn’t go nearly as far, it’s worth approaching historical comparisons with caution.

Rounding out Stolen Youth, Markowicz and Mandel lead the reader to the next frontier in the parental rights battle: transgender medicine. As recent revelations about the gender clinic at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital indicate, the authors were right on target. Last month, Jamie Reed, a former staffer at the St. Louis gender clinic, blew the whistle on the untested and unsound treatments the transgender clinic provides for children—including puberty-blocking drugs and hormones. As Reed reported, and Markowicz echoes in the chapter, the experts entrusted to the care of children admit that, when it comes to pediatric transgender medicine, they “are building the plane while [they] are flying it.” This is no way to treat children.

Markowicz and Mandel throughout the book provide concrete ways in which parents can protect their children, from “opting out” of certain lessons to requesting public records and finding alternative education options. While they’re all excellent suggestions, even sending a simple letter to a child’s school may seem daunting—readers may be left wanting more information on how to do so.

Stolen Youth aptly depicts where the parents’ fight likely began for most readers, and where it is headed. Reading between the lines, that means that the fight is far from over. Through my time working in the education space, parents who’ve come to me and my colleagues for help ask for three things: someone with whom they can share their stories, advice on how to combat these issues, and the motivation to keep fighting. Markowicz and Mandel successfully provide all three in Stolen Youth, though I hope they’re preparing for part two.

Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation
by Karol Markowicz and Bethany Mandel
DW Books, 304 pp., $28.99

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Manufacturers say government climate change initiative would make your washing cycles longer, clothes dirtier

When Cincinnati firefighter Ed Wallace bought a high efficiency Whirlpool washing machine, he came to regret the decision almost immediately. The machine used less water—not enough to clean Wallace’s work clothes—and his colleagues at the firehouse quickly took notice. “I walked past my guys and they say, ‘Dude, you stink!'” Wallace said. “I smelled myself, and yeah, that’s me stinking.”  

Now, President Joe Biden is pushing regulations that could force Wallace’s stinky situation upon millions of Americans.

Biden’s Energy Department last month proposed new efficiency standards for washing machines that would require new appliances to use considerably less water, all in an effort to “confront the global climate crisis.” Those mandates would force manufacturers to reduce cleaning performance to ensure their machines comply, leading industry giants such as Whirlpool said in public comments on the rule. They’ll also make the appliances more expensive and laundry day a headache—each cycle will take longer, the detergent will cost more, and in the end, the clothes will be less clean, the manufacturers say. 

The proposed washing machine rule marks the latest example of the administration turning to consumer regulations to advance its climate change goals. Last month, the Energy Department published an analysis of its proposed cooking appliance efficiency regulations, which it found would effectively ban half of all gas stoves on the U.S. market from being sold. The department has also proposed new efficiency standards for refrigerators, which could come into effect in 2027. “Collectively these energy efficiency actions … support President Biden’s ambitious clean energy agenda to combat the climate crisis,” the Energy Department said in February.

While the Energy Department—which did not return a request for comment—acknowledged in its proposal that “maintaining acceptable cleaning performance can be more difficult as energy and water levels are reduced,” it expressed confidence that Whirlpool and other appliance manufacturers can comply with its regulations without sacrificing stain removal and other performance standards. For the Heritage Foundation’s Travis Fisher, however, manufacturer concerns over the proposal are justified.

“When you’re squeezing all you can out of the efficiency in terms of electricity use and water … you by definition either make the appliance worse or slower,” said Fisher, who serves as a senior research fellow at the foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. “Why are we so focused on the energy output, as opposed to if it’s helping me wash my clothes? That standard has kind of gone off the rails.”

Beyond the performance standard debate, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers argued that the Energy Department’s washing machine regulations “would have a disproportionate, negative impact on low-income households” by eliminating cheaper appliances from the market. The Energy Department estimates that manufacturers will incur nearly $700 million in conversion costs to transition to the new machines.

The department countered concerns over higher appliance prices by arguing in its proposal that consumers will ultimately save money under the regulations through lower energy and water bills. Still, those estimated savings won’t apply to all consumers, roughly a quarter of whom “would experience a net cost” thanks to the efficiency rule, according to the Energy Department’s proposal.

The Energy Department is required to conduct efficiency standard reviews every six years under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which Congress enacted in 1975, two years after an Arab oil embargo inflated gas prices in the United States. The Clinton administration subsequently established the country’s first washing machine energy and water efficiency standards in 2001, just before former president George W. Bush took office. Those standards led to “ruined laundry, ongoing maintenance, and service calls,” prompting Whirlpool to release a cleaning product “specifically designed to address moldy washing machines,” according to George Washington University’s Sofie Miller.

The debacle has not stopped the Biden administration from moving forward with more stringent appliance energy efficiency standards, which have not been updated for washing machines since 2012. The tightening of those standards “could put performance at risk” but is unlikely to provide “meaningful energy savings,” the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers says, because most appliances covered under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act “now operate at peak efficiency.”

“They keep tightening the standards, and I’m not sure their reasoning makes sense anymore,” Fisher told the Washington Free Beacon.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Less than one month into her first term as Arkansas governor, Sarah Sanders was tapped to deliver the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union, a speaking slot typically granted to rising stars in the party with the intent to elevate them onto the national stage. But stepping onto the national stage doesn’t appear to be Sanders’s goal—at least for now.

In her address, she used Arkansas as the example of what Republicans are doing across the country. “Here in Arkansas and across America, Republicans are working to end the policy of trapping kids in failing schools and sentencing them to a lifetime of poverty,” Sanders said.  ”We will educate, not indoctrinate our kids, and put students on a path to success.”

In an hour-long interview, the former White House press secretary dodged questions about the 2024 election, diverting the conversation back to what she’s doing in Arkansas.

She already has substantive accomplishments to point to. This past Tuesday, exactly one month after her State of the Union response, the state legislature passed Sanders’s signature legislation, an ambitious overhaul of Arkansas schools, and she has already signed it into law. Corey DeAngelis, a leading advocate for school choice, said Arkansas is now the “gold standard for educational freedom.”

The bill is a kitchen-sink approach to education reform—in addition to establishing universal school choice, it yanks obscene sexual materials and critical race theory from classrooms, sets stringent new learning standards, and raises the base teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000.

“This is what bold conservative education legislation looks like,” Sanders said from the governor’s office, where she monitored the debate on the bill taking place on the other side of the Capitol.

And Sanders says Arkansas as a whole can be the “blueprint” for what conservative states could do.

Sanders joins a crowd of superstar Republican governors making headway by focusing on schools, and armed with a legislature of staunch conservatives, she’s charging ahead of other states. Florida’s Ron DeSantis is still fighting to get the sorts of reforms passed by Arkansas in Sanders’s first few weeks over hurdles in his legislature—his universal school choice bill, for example, faces even some Republican opposition. Sanders came out of her long campaign in Arkansas eager to establish herself as the “Education Governor” and thus far is doing just that.

Sanders’s growing profile has also made her a target of Democratic activists and politicians. Washington Post columnists are writing hit pieces questioning why anyone would move to Arkansas: “Good luck recruiting Californians for Arkansas, Sarah Sanders,” wrote Philip Bump. Shortly after Sanders’s national address, California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom took aim at Arkansas’s crime rate and last week was taking shots on Twitter about local Arkansas pieces of legislation.

Sanders acknowledges that she’s drawing more scrutiny to her state, but she doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. “We outkick our coverage, frankly, in a lot of places,” she said.

“When it comes to politicians on the national stage for a small state, we have some pretty big names out there,” the governor said. “I’m sure you’ll find people that will disagree, but my opinion is that it’s a good thing for our state, and I plan on using that platform to better us.”

Sanders says the critics are unavoidable. “I try to tune it out and stay focused on the objectives in front of us. There are people who wouldn’t care what’s in the bill, they’re gonna hate it simply because I’m associated with it. They don’t want to see me be successful. Certainly that’s disappointing, but not surprising, and it’s not gonna slow us down from doing things that we feel like are the right thing to do.”

Sanders sharpened her ability to drown out the critics as White House press secretary. Not only was Sanders the longest-serving Trump administration press secretary—she was the only person to hold the job for more than a year—she was also the most successful, taking over as the daily briefing became a media feeding frenzy and adding a semblance of order to the chaos. She remains beloved by staff, some of whom followed her to Arkansas, and her former boss, to whom she still talks regularly.

Though Sanders is taking advantage of lessons learned at the White House, former colleagues say she’s also developed the ability to talk fluently about policy.

“We used to tell her, you need to get more detail,” said a former White House colleague. “Now the opposite is the case. She’s gone from somebody who was laser-focused on communications with a thin understanding of the policy to somebody who is a policy expert. It’s impressive to me.”

It’s not the first transformation of her career, Sanders says. When she first joined the Donald Trump campaign, she never foresaw that she’d become the lead spokeswoman for Trump’s administration.

“I was much more on the strategy and political operation side, and really didn’t see myself as a front person or the public-facing individual,” she explained.

Sanders joined the Trump campaign in 2016 to do coalition-building in the South, but after a few TV appearances, Trump called her to say he wanted to see her on television every day. And at the White House, after Sanders filled in for then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer while serving as his deputy, Trump tapped her to fill the job.

Her rise to the Arkansas governorship is a different story. Sanders announced her run in January 2021 and, as the prohibitive favorite from the outset, had two years to prepare for the job. It’s during that time that she decided she wanted to be the “Education Governor”—she not only became an expert on the issue but also gained confidence that she had to make it her trademark legislation.

“I went to all 75 counties,” Sanders said. “Everywhere I went as I traveled on the campaign for two years, every community wants their kids to do better. If we don’t have a good education system in place, then we are not setting our kids up for success.”

On the ground in Arkansas, Republicans say Sanders has brought a “new energy” to the legislature. “The whole atmosphere and mood of everything is different,” said Bart Hester, who leads the state’s upper chamber. “It’s such a fun energy, an exciting and new energy. It’s fun to come in everyday.”

Hester says the onslaught of opposition from teachers’ unions against the education bill was no match for Sanders.

“We have a governor now where members are more scared of her than they are their superintendents or the teacher union—we’ve never experienced that,” Hester said. “They don’t want to disappoint her—they know that she’s super popular, they don’t want to be the guy that was against their number-one priority.”

Sanders scoffs at suggestions that her education plan was a “copycat” of legislation championed by DeSantis, another high-profile Republican governor. “Hard to copy when ours is much bigger and goes much further,” Sanders said. But she has nothing negative to say about her Republican counterpart in Florida, and says there’s a “great sense of camaraderie and willingness to share best practices” between her and DeSantis, who has emerged as Trump’s chief competition in the Republican Party.

Sanders is yet to weigh in on who the Republican presidential nominee should be in 2024—her “focus is solely on Arkansas,” she says, in the same way every ambitious and upwardly mobile politician does. And Trump, her former boss, reportedly called Sanders in recent weeks to ask for her endorsement, which still hasn’t come.

But she also said she “maintains a great relationship” with Trump, and left the door open for an endorsement in the future.

“When the time comes, maybe, but right now, I don’t want to do anything that takes away from the huge agenda list that we have to get done here in Arkansas,” Sanders said. “I don’t intend on slowing down on that front at any point soon. And so I don’t want to do anything that takes away, not just my attention, but also the attention of what we’re accomplishing.”

A former White House colleague who remains close to Sanders doesn’t expect her 2024 neutrality to change any time soon. “Trump’s not her boss anymore,” the former colleague said. “Her boss is the people of Arkansas, and that’s where I assume her priorities will lie.”

Republicans in the state appreciate her focus on Arkansas and recognize she’s putting the work they’re doing in the Capitol first. “Everyone wants a minute with her—she can be Sarah the national celebrity, or Sarah the governor, and she only has so many minutes in a day,” Hester said. “She is spending those minutes as Sarah the governor.”

Republican state senator Matt McKee says Sanders has the whole legislature bullish on Arkansas.

“I know Florida’s been at the forefront, Texas has done things, but Arkansas can be the place,” McKee said.

Sanders says her appreciation for Arkansas has grown since moving her family back to her home state. After traveling to each county for her campaign, she has enhanced her ability to sell the state to visitors. The governor boasts that she can point to the best place to eat in any Arkansas town—this reporter was sent to CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers in Russellville.

When it comes to dining, things are going more smoothly for Sanders in Arkansas. Thus far, she says she hasn’t been denied service, as she was in 2019 at the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia.

“You know, knock on wood, I have not been asked to leave any restaurant so far,” Sanders said. “It’s amazing to be home.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Tirien Steinbach helped derail a talk by a federal judge. The school says the talk’s organizers should contact her for ‘support.’

Hours after Stanford University apologized to Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan for the disruption of his talk last week, administrators encouraged members of the law school’s Federalist Society chapter, which sponsored Duncan’s visit, to “reach out” to the same administrators—including the diversity dean—who aided and abetted the melee.

Leaders of the Stanford Federalist Society received an email Saturday night from acting associate dean of students Jeanne Merino, who stood by silently as students disrupted Duncan’s talk. Merino pointed them to “resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health”—and discouraged them from tweeting about the event “until this news cycle winds down.”

Among the resources Merino to which pointed them was Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach, who took the podium from Duncan to talk about the “harm” he’d caused—and whom Stanford condemned in its apology to Duncan, characterizing Steinbach’s intervention as “inappropriate.”

In addition to Steinbach, Merino listed herself, Associate Director of Student Affairs Holly Parrish, and Student Affairs Program Coordinator Megan Brown as possible sources of “support.” All three watched in silence as protesters accosted Duncan and berated their peers for inviting him.

Merino went on to discourage the Federalist Society from tweeting about the disruption “until this news cycle winds down,” stating that “trolls are looking for a fight.” That warning came after Stanford endured a brutal 24 hours on social media, with numerous lawyers—including Duncan himself—calling for Steinbach to be fired and the protesters punished.

Merino did not respond to a request for comment.

The email raises questions about the sincerity of Stanford’s apology, which was signed both by the university’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne—who is himself under fire for allegedly falsifying data while working at Genentech, his previous employer—and the law school’s dean, Jenny Martinez.

The apology, delivered to Duncan two days after his aborted talk, said the protesters violated university policy, which “staff members … should have enforced” and acknowledged that Steinbach had “intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

Though Stanford said it was “taking steps to ensure that something like this does not happen again,” it did not commit to disciplining the protesters or sanctioning the staffers who abetted them.

The apology followed a mealy-mouthed statement by Martinez lamenting that the event “went awry.”

The student activists appear unchastened. They slammed Stanford for throwing “its capable and compassionate administrators” under the bus, according to an email sent to a mailing list for the Stanford chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. There, board members of the chapter, which helped organize the protest, praised “every single person” who disrupted Duncan, characterizing the protesters’ conduct as “Stanford Law School at its best.”

The guild stands “in support of confronting judicial architects of systems of oppression with social consequences for their actions,” the group wrote, implying that it would disrupt any other conservative speaker who spoke at Stanford.

“The law school cannot have a culture where LGBTQ+ students, especially queer and trans [people of color], ‘share a sense of belonging and respect’ if speakers like Judge Duncan are normalized on our campus,” the guild’s email read. “Stanford can accede to the Federalist Society’s interest in the outcome of this event (namely, that such generative protests not be allowed to happen again), or it can further its supposed commitment to belongingness. It cannot do both.”

The group—whose board of directors includes Nathan Tauger, David Cremins, Lily Bou, Mohit Mookim, Marin Callaway, Oona Cahill, Bella Cooper, Esau Ruiz, Kiran Chawla, Jacob Maddox, and Asher Morse—did not respond to a request for comment.

Merino’s Saturday email implied that some students had received physical threats following Duncan’s talk. Merino encouraged Federalist Society members “who are not feeling safe” to contact the university’s director of “threat assessment,” Alejandro Martinez, who is part of the Stanford police department.

Martinez “can read social media interactions and direct communications to assess whether the implied or actual threats are likely to become a reality,” Merino wrote. The Washington Free Beacon has not been able to independently determine whether members of the Federalist Society have been subject to physical threats.

Duncan, who is calling for Steinbach’s dismissal, has also said that members of the Federalist Society deserve their own mea culpa from the school. “I hope a similar apology is tendered to the persons in the Stanford law school community most harmed by the mob action: The members of the Federalist Society who graciously invited me to campus,” the judge told National Review‘s Ed Whelan on Saturday. “I look forward to learning what measures Stanford plans to take to restore a culture of intellectual freedom.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Feds say all deposits will be guaranteed

U.S. regulators on Sunday announced they were intervening to close Signature Bank, marking the second U.S. bank to fail days apart and the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

The bank has been placed into receivership under the Fed’s emergency lending authority, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

According to a December 2022 securities filing, N.Y.-based Signature Bank held more than $110 billion in assets and some of the biggest stakes among banks in the nation in the cryptocurrency industry.

The bank said at the time that it would be shrinking its $17.79 billion in crypto-related deposits by $8 billion to reduce risk in “a challenging cryptocurrency environment.”

The bank had client offices in New York, Connecticut, California, Nevada, and North Carolina, and had eight business lines beyond digital asset banking, including commercial real estate. Its clients among crypto companies included USDC stablecoin issuer Circle, the crypto exchange Coinbase, and the funds transfer network for cryptocurrency settlements and payments Fireblocks.

As of close of business Friday March 10 Coinbase had an approximately $240m balance in corporate cash at Signature. As stated by the FDIC, we expect to fully recover these funds. https://t.co/XY5L7m4RMs

— Coinbase (@coinbase) March 12, 2023

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Sunday that the closure decision, made alongside the state chartering authority and federal partners over the weekend, was to “stabilize the banking sector and protect the hard-earned money of New Yorkers whose livelihoods depend on impacted companies.”

“I’m grateful that the Federal regulators have taken steps to do just that, and I hope that these actions will provide increased confidence in the stability of our banking system. Many depositors at these banks are small businesses, including those driving the innovation economy, and their success is key to New York’s robust economy.”

SVB Fail

Following the failure of the tech-focused Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in Santa Clara, California, on March 10, stock prices plunged at other banks that cater to technology companies, including First Republic Bank and PacWest Bank. SVB’s closure was the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history at $209 billion, following Washington Mutual’s collapse in the 2008 crisis.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pointed to rising interest rates, which have been increased by the Federal Reserve to combat inflation, as the core problem for Silicon Valley Bank. Many of SVB’s assets that were Treasury bond holdings or mortgage-backed securities, lost value with each rate increase. At the same time, the bank’s startup clients were increasingly drawing down funds amid a sparsity of venture capital investment.

Regulators have stepped in to guarantee customer deposits, both insured and uninsured, in SVB and Signature Bank, seeking to reassure the public and prevent wider bank runs in tech-exposed institutions.

In a joint statement with the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve, the FDIC—said that it is “announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank” as SVB was granted.

READ MORE

Government Steps In With Plan to Protect All Deposits at Silicon Valley Bank

“All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer,” read a joint statement from the federal regulators.

“Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected. Senior management has also been removed. Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law,” the statement continued.

“These actions will reduce stress across the financial system, support financial stability and minimize any impact on businesses, households, taxpayers, and the broader economy,” the Fed said of its emergency management approach.

Earlier on March 8, crypto-focused Silvergate Bank also disclosed plans to wind down its operations and voluntarily liquidate. Its owner, the Silvergate Capital Corporation, said the decision was made “in light of recent industry and regulatory developments.” Silvergate said its liquidation plan included “full repayment of all deposits.”

The bank had been in the spotlight over its alleged involvement in the collapse of cryptofirm FTX.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced a bill on March 9 that would block U.S. subsidies to Chinese battery companies.

If enacted, Ford’s new electric vehicle battery plant that licenses a Chinese battery maker’s technology wouldn’t qualify for electric vehicle (EV) tax credits appropriated in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

In addition to disqualifying a U.S. company that “relies on technology via a licensing agreement with a foreign entity of concern” for the IRA tax credits, Rubio’s legislation includes other categories, such as an American company under the substantial influence of a foreign entity of concern, 20 percent or more owned by a foreign entity of concern, or a joint venture with at least one partner that is considered a foreign entity of concern.

Any entities governed by a “covered nation” are considered foreign entities of concern. The current covered nation list includes China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran.

“Making those batteries here at home is much better than continuing to rely exclusively on foreign imports, like other auto companies do,” Ford said in response to Rubio. “A wholly owned Ford subsidiary alone will build, own and operate this plant. No other entity will get U.S. tax dollars for this project.”

Last month, Ford announced a deal with Chinese EV battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) to build a battery park in Marshall, Michigan. The plant will start operating in 2026 and will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the American company; CATL will provide the battery technology, some equipment, and workers.

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On the same day as the Ford announcement, Rubio wrote a letter to the secretaries of Treasury, Energy, and Transportation, asking for a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review of the Ford–CATL licensing agreement. He said in a statement in February that he wanted to ensure no taxpayer dollars would “go to enrich PRC [People’s Republic of China] national champion CATL, or any other Beijing-supported company, directly or indirectly.”

Nick Iacovella, a spokesperson for the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA), previously told The Epoch Times that the production tax credit amount for the Ford–CATL battery plant could reach $1 billion, depending on the exact terms of the licensing agreement, given the factory’s annual capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours, or 35 million kilowatt-hours, and the IRA advanced manufacturing tax credit of $45 per kilowatt-hour.

CPA is an advocacy organization representing exclusively domestic manufacturing producers; Ford isn’t a member of the CPA.

In a Newsweek op-ed, Rubio called EVs a “Trojan horse that Beijing will use to threaten, divide, and outcompete the U.S.”

“Ford’s massive project will bring 2,500 new jobs to Marshall’s small, historic farming community, but it will also bring America’s greatest geopolitical adversary into the heartland,” he said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Onlookers gasped as 11-year-old Knox Zajac read a sexually explicit passage from a book in Windham Middle School’s (WMS) library to the Windham School Board in Maine.

Knox Zajac read the scene in a noticeably prepubescent voice.

The book Knox Zajac read, “Nick and Charlie,” by Alice Oseman describes a gay sex scene between two teens.

But for the school librarian who saw Knox Zajac check out the book, exposing an 11-year-old to sexually explicit words wasn’t enough, he said.

The librarian also recommended similar books.

“This book was at my middle school and was on a stand. When I rented it out to show my Dad it, the librarian asked if I wanted more, and if I wanted a graphic novel version,” Knox Zajac said in a video posted by Maine parental rights advocate Shawn McBreairty.

At that, the room gasped.

But according to father Adam Zajac, the librarian was the one gasping when Knox Zajac announced he was checking the book out for his Dad to inspect.

“Her face immediately turned red. She got very uncomfortable and started stuttering,” said Adam Zajac.

Adam Zajac said his son offered to read passages from the book before the school board.

“My son Knox really wanted to attend,” he said.

Then Knox Zajac asked if he could read a passage from the book to the meeting that included a curse word and a sexually explicit description.

“You know what? If it was good enough to be in your schools and it’s okay for them to sign that out to you, yes. You can,” Adam Zajac replied.

When Adam Zajac heard his child’s voice reading the words, he felt a rising anger, he said.

“As soon as I heard him, it got me so upset listening to the book. I’m glad he read that page,” he said. “It immediately made it easy for me to say what I said about the podium.”

Adam unloaded on the meeting.

“You know who knows the best for our children? The parents,” he told the meeting.

“I don’t work anymore, and I will be more than happy to focus my time and effort for the security of my child and children in this school. I will be a thorn in your sides. So, I just want you to be aware of what you’ve awoken.”

Knox Zajac first found “Nick and Charlie” while looking for books at the WMS library. He had heard his high school-age brother discussing how his school had the book “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe with his father Adam Zajac.

Parents nationwide have fought against the presence of the graphic novel “Gender Queer” in school libraries because of the book’s explicit pictures of sexual positions and solo sex.

Mature Content for Middle Schoolers

Shocked by the inappropriate content in “Nick and Charlie,” Knox Zajac checked it out to show his father.

“Dad, you have to look at this library book that I got,” Knox Zajac told him.

Adam Zajac said “Nick and Charlie” started with normal pictures of two teen boys hanging out. But then he flipped over a page and found a picture of the two boys deep in a straddled makeout session.

“It frustrated the hell out of me,” Adam Zajac said.

Adam Zajac said he felt outraged that a middle school library would contain a book rampant with explicit sexual descriptions, endorsements of casual sex, teen drinking, and 37 curse words.

“Everyone should go into uni single!! University years are your sexiest years!! Gotta bang as many people as you can!!!!” one quote from the book reads, according to the obscene book watchdog website.

“He lied to people at school for months about his anorexia,” reads another.

“‘I want a drunk hookup in the bathroom later,’ he murmurs, and then he walks off before I have the chance to answer him,” one character says.

“Like one minute you’re seriously pissed off with me and the next you want to [expletive] with me!” another line reads.

Battling the School Board

In the school board meeting, Adam Zajac said he fought WMS to remove “Nick and Charlie.”

He first alerted the school board to the book on Feb. 18, he said, but he doubts the school will take action to remove it.

“They write policies that make it extremely difficult to get these books removed,” he said.

Although it may be easy to get books with sex scenes into the hands of children as young as 10 years old, it’s difficult to get them out, Adam Zajac said.

A book removal challenge can take four months to process and makes parents jump through many administrative hoops, he said.

Most of the time, parents give up rather than engage in a drawn-out battle with the bureaucracy.

Right now, Adam Zajac said he hopes national media coverage of his story will force the school board to act.

“I’m so thankful that there’s a national spotlight on this to really give us an opportunity nationwide to get this crap out of the schools and this indoctrination of our children out of there,” he said.

He added that he’s not sure his efforts will result in the book’s removal.

Few Activists Versus Many Parents

Despite the school’s reluctance, he estimates that nearly 80 percent of local parents want “Nick and Charlie” out of middle school libraries.

Even so, he said, WMS appears intimidated by the small percentage of the community that appreciates the books.

“I really think the only people that were there for the book were these librarians and activists that were called upon to come in there and stand up,” he said.

As of now, the school hasn’t removed “Nick and Charlie” from the school library, Adam Zajac said.

“Nick and Charlie” isn’t the only book in the Windham school system with sexually explicit images, he added.

In Maine’s School District 14, there are 68 books with sexually explicit passages, he said. But he was unsure how these books were divided between middle school and high school.

He said he hopes local parents will wake up to the fact that schools are willing to give children sexually graphic books but hesitant to remove them.

“Sexualization has no place in our schools,” he said. “And this is taxpayer-funded. So, in my opinion, this should be a majority-rule situation,”

The Epoch Times reached out to WMS but received no response.

As previously reported, many Maine public schools have defied parents to thrust explicit books and transgender identities on students.

In one Maine school, a counselor secretly encouraged a 13-year-old girl to identify as transgender.

A new curriculum for Maine schools starts teaching children as young as kindergarten about transgender teddy bears, red-labeled crayons that identify as blue, and homosexual penguins.

In Hermon, Maine, a teacher told parents to take their children elsewhere if they didn’t trust teachers.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Home Depot founder notes that SVB collapse should be a ‘wake up’ call

Several billionaires issued warnings over the weekend after the Silicon Valley Bank suddenly collapsed late last week and forced the federal government to step in.

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman wrote Saturday that the federal government had about two days to fix the problem—by Monday morning. He noted that a number of depositors may not see their money because it wasn’t insured; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) notes it insures $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank for each account.

The shuttering of the bank, known as SVB, was announced by the FDIC, marking the worst failure of an American financial institution since 2008.

“The gov’t has about 48 hours to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake,” Ackman posted on Saturday morning. “The giant sucking sound you will hear will be the withdrawal of substantially all uninsured deposits from all but the ‘systemically important banks’ (SIBs),” he wrote, adding that more “withdrawals will drain liquidity from community, regional, and other banks and begin the destruction of these important institutions.”

Before Friday’s collapse, SVB was one of the top 20 largest banks in the country, sparking fears that its failure could trigger contagion that would impact other financial or technology companies. The bank failed as depositors rushed to withdraw their money over concerns about the bank’s status and as the firm’s stock prices cratered by 86 percent this week.

“Already thousands of the fastest growing, most innovative venture-backed companies in the U.S. will begin to fail to make payroll next week,” Ackman, the billionaire founder and CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, warned on Twitter. “Had the gov’t stepped in on Friday to guarantee SVB’s deposits (in exchange for penny warrants which would have wiped out the substantial majority of its equity value) this could have been avoided and SVB’s 40-year franchise value could have been preserved and transferred to a new owner in exchange for an equity injection.”

Ackman said that the federal government should have gotten involved quicker because the bank’s collapse could reverberate across the U.S. economy and banking sector at large.

“SVB’s senior management made a basic mistake. They invested short-term deposits in longer-term, fixed-rate assets. Thereafter short-term rates went up and a bank run ensued. Senior management screwed up and they should lose their jobs,” Ackman wrote.

With $209 billion in assets, the Santa Clara, California-based lender was the 16th largest U.S. bank, making the list of potential buyers who could pull off a deal over a weekend relatively short. The White House said on Saturday that President Joe Biden had spoken with California Gov. Gavin Newsom about the bank and efforts to address the situation.

Some analysts and prominent investors warned that without a resolution by Monday, other banks could come under pressure if people worried about their deposits.

“The good news is it is unlikely an SVB-style bankruptcy will extend to the large banks,” risk and financial advisory firm Kroll said in a research note. However, small community banks could face issues and the risk is “much higher if uninsured depositors of SVB aren’t made whole and have to take a haircut on their deposits,” Kroll added.

Other Warnings

In a Sunday morning appearance on Fox News, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus said that the bank’s collapse should be a “wake up” call for many Americans about the state of the U.S. economy.

“Maybe the American people will finally wake up and understand that we’re living in very tough times, that, in fact, that a recession may have already started. Who knows? But it doesn’t look good,” Marcus told the outlet.

He added: “I feel bad for all of these people that lost all their money in this woke bank. You know, it was more distressing to hear that the bank officials sold off their stock before this happened. It’s depressing to me. Who knows whether the Justice Department would go after them? They’re a woke company, so I guess not. And they’ll probably get away with it.”

“The Fed keeps raising rates and inflation keeps going in the wrong direction. It’s not staying where it should be. People are struggling. People can’t pay their bills. They can’t fill their tanks with gas. And if you think that’s a good sign, I don’t think it is. And we have an administration that’s obtuse to this. They just keep talking about the great times and how good it is. It’s not good,” Marcus told the outlet.

Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China to target ‘American homeland’ in event of war, expert warns

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has reportedly set up defense mobilization offices across China in recent weeks—signaling that the regime is preparing for war against the United States and its allies, according to China expert and author, Bradley Thayer.

“[Chinese leader] Xi is attempting to prepare the Chinese people for that period of great sacrifice, which might be a sustained conventional war against the United States and its allies, or even a nuclear conflict with the United States and its allies, and the Chinese Communist Party,” Thayer told “China in Focus” on NTD, the sister media outlet of the Epoch Times, pointing to the setting-up of military offices across China.

As the director of China policy at the Center for Security Policy and co-author of the book “Understanding the China Threat,” Thayer singled out the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States for a week before being shot down on Feb. 4.

“The balloon, to my mind, was a signal: It was not just an intelligence collection operation, but it was a signal that the Chinese Communist Party is not going to leave the American homeland alone,” he said.

“If war comes, they’re going to target the United States, in the United States—the American people themselves.”

Thayer took note of Xi’s recent speech in which he took aim at the United States for the first time, calling it “an alarming development.”

At a panel discussion on the sidelines of China’s parliamentary session on March 6., Xi was quoted as saying that “Western countries, led by the United States, have implemented all-round containment and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to the country’s development.”

Thayer said the speech was a significant development because the Chinese leader had refrained from mentioning the United States directly in this context—until now.

“It’s a cause of great concern: We’re entering into a dangerous period, a particularly dangerous period in the Sino-American relationship,” Thayer said.

“So in identifying the United States in name, he’s drawing lines in the sand between his vision for the world, his vision of interests, and how the United States opposes that. So it’s just another symptom of how this Cold War is becoming colder, it’s becoming more intense.”

Defense Mobilization

PLA Daily, the official newspaper of China’s People’s Liberation Army, published a commentary recently by Chen Lixin, the director of the mobilization bureau of Shanghai Command. Chen stressed the urgency of China’s build-up of a “defense mobilization” system that “solely exists for war and prepares for war” under the leadership of the CCP.

The article was published on Jan. 31, the same day on which Luohe city in central China’s Henan Province held a plaque unveiling ceremony for the local defense mobilization office. Such military offices have been opening throughout China since the end of December.

Deter Chinese Invasion of Taiwan

According to Thayer, Xi Jinping has made clear his intention to conquer Taiwan.

“That’s one of the ambitions, that’s one of the aims of the Chinese Communist Party, and Xi Jinping certainly seems to realize this in a very near term, the next year, the next year and a half, the next two years,” he noted.

In Thayer’s opinion, Taiwan is important both economically and strategically and, thus, he stressed that the United States needs to deter any move against the island by the CCP.

“To underscore the importance of Taiwan: Taiwan is significant for the West and the rest of the global economy. Certainly economically, because it’s a chip producer, and a very important source of wealth,” he said.

“Secondly, strategically, Taiwan occupies critical geostrategic space: If you will, bottling up the Chinese navy, and serving as a point of attention with China,” he added.

Thayer said he believes that “Taiwan’s existence is a very important symbol of what China could have been and what it someday might be.”

To deter China’s invasion of Taiwan, Thayer urged that the United States beef up its military presence on the island.

“What we should be doing is ensuring that the army, the marine corps, the air force, and the navy have a very strong and robust presence on Taiwan,” he said.

The United States should encourage India, Australia, and Japan, as well as European partners, to deploy forces on Taiwan as well, he said, so that “there’s a very strong conventional deterrent from the U.S. and its allies.”

“Those are very tangible steps that we need to take, because Xi Jinping … is determined to aggress, he’s determined to impose his will on the rest of the world. And so we cannot take half measures when we’re dealing with that type of leader,” Thayer said.

Jessica Mao and Lynn Xu contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A congressional panel wants to know why the U.S. Department of the Treasury stopped sending Congress reports of suspicious overseas activity by U.S.-based bank accounts – right when Biden family members became the subject of the reports.

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., held a March 10 hearing to examine the Treasury Department’s sudden refusal to provide “suspicious activity reports” submitted by banks involving the Biden family and their associates’ unusual foreign or high-dollar transactions.

“Biden’s Treasury Department continues to make excuses for its failure to provide the suspicious activity reports that are critical to our investigation of the Biden family’s business schemes,” said Comer in a statement.

“We are concerned the Treasury Department is acting in bad faith to produce these documents to the Oversight Committee when we know that it has already produced them to another congressional office. At next week’s hearing, a Treasury Department official can explain to Congress and the American people why the department is hiding critical information,” said Comer.

Under federal law, when banks suspect suspicious overseas activity by an account holder, it submits a “suspicious activity report” or “SAR” to the Treasury Department. 

The Treasury Department would routinely share these reports with Congress until Congress requested to see hundreds of SARs involving members of the Biden family reported by banks as suspect foreign transactions. That’s when Treasury suddenly and without explanation refused to provide the reports.

“Chairman Comer wrote to Secretary Yellen on January 11, 2023, requesting access to these SARs, and Committee Republicans made multiple requests during the 117th Congress for the same,” the Oversight Committee reports.

“However, the Treasury Department has not provided any SARs to date. At the hearing, the committee will examine the justifications Treasury officials have provided the committee about its failure to produce requested documents and examine legislative solutions to ensure Congress has timely access to suspicious activity reports,” the Oversight Committee adds.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

ANALYSIS – When word leaked in 2022 that former President Donald Trump had asked advisors about using U.S. military force against drug cartel labs in Mexico, the anti-Trump media and defense intelligentsia went into a tizzy.

They went apoplectic again when Trump, in January of this year, declared that if reelected, he would “order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.”

Now with Joe Biden‘s border in chaos, 100,000 Americans dead from fentanyl overdoses, and the most recent kidnap and murder of American citizens in Mexico, a growing group of Republican lawmakers is expressing its dissatisfaction with the ongoing, impotent U.S. law enforcement response to the drug cartels.

They are also asking for the U.S. military to step in.

And the cartels appear worried.

As Tom Rogan writes in the Washington Examiner: “The current U.S. strategy, wherein the U.S. gives the Mexican government a lot of money to pretend to confront the cartels and arrest the odd leader in advance of a U.S. visit or aid package, is patently ridiculous.”

So, two Republican members of Congress, Dan Crenshaw, Texas, and Michael Waltz, Fla., have introduced legislation to authorize U.S. military force against the most deadly Mexican drug cartels.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is proposing the same thing, saying at a press conference Wednesday with Senator John Kennedy that he wants the U.S. to unleash its “fury and might” on Mexico’s cartels.

Though he added that the U.S. military should not forcibly enter Mexico, which makes me wonder if Graham thinks the Mexican narco-government would simply allow our forces entry.

These anti-cartel efforts recently found support from former Attorney General Bill Barr.

Tied to the proposals to allow the use of our military is the call to designate Mexican drug cartels ‘Foreign Terrorist Organizations’ (FTOs), which would open a host of avenues for the U.S. to strike at the groups, both financially and legally.

This is also something Trump has proposed.

On Wednesday, Senators Rick Scott and Roger Marshall reintroduced the ‘Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act,’ (the Act) which would provide the U.S. government with additional power to fight the drug cartels.

The Act would start by formally designating four of the most dangerous Mexican cartels as FTOs: the Reynosa/Los Metros faction of the Gulf Cartel; The Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas; The Jalisco New Generation Cartel; and The Sinaloa Cartel.

Other cartels could then follow.

Of course, Mexico’s corrupt socialist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) quickly pushed back saying that these GOP demands threatened Mexican sovereignty.

AMLO went so far as threatening his own intervention in the U.S. elections, adding that he would ask Americans of Mexican and Hispanic origin not to vote for Republicans if their “aggression” continued.

But the Mexican government’s reaction was predictable.

More interesting was how the cartels responded to these new calls for U.S. action against them.

Interestingly, they quickly released the remaining two live U.S. hostages recently kidnapped in Matamoros near Brownsville, Texas. Two others were killed.

But the cartels went a step further – the Gulf cartel’s Scorpions faction wrote an apology to the residents of Matamoros. And not only that but turned over the murderous kidnappers to Mexican authorities.

According to the Daily Caller, the letter stated that the criminals involved went against the cartel’s rules of “respecting the life and well-being of the innocent.”

The letter added: “We have decided to turn over those who were directly involved and responsible in the events, who at all times acted under their own decision-making and lack of discipline.”

Five of their members were then reportedly handed over.

This uncommon response seems to show that the cartels fear a direct (covert or overt) U.S. military intervention against them inside Mexico.

What specific military or paramilitary actions the U.S. could or should take against the cartels is a topic for another piece.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Tensions are rising between the United States and Mexico…

On Thursday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador threatened to commence an “information campaign” against Republicans after some lawmakers proposed harsher measures to crack down on cartels smuggling fentanyl into the country.

Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more fatal than morphine…

“Starting today we are going to start an information campaign for Mexicans who live and work in the United States and for all Hispanics to inform them of what we are doing in Mexico and how this initiative by the Republicans, in addition to being irresponsible, is an offense against the people of Mexico, a lack of respect for our independence, our sovereignty,” President Obrador said.

🇲🇽 Mexico President López Obrador threatens the Republican Party with ordering all Mexicans living in the US to vote against them if they insist on declaring war on drug traffickers and classifying them as terrorists. pic.twitter.com/p8NX733xo5— DaveO ⚔️ 🗽 (@Patri0tCx_) March 10, 2023

“And if they do not change their attitude and think that they are going to use Mexico for their propaganda, electoral, and political purposes, we are going to call for them not to vote for that party, because it is interventionist, inhumane, hypocritical, and corrupt,” Lopez Obrador said, later adding that Mexico would be insisting that “not one vote” goes to Republicans from Mexicans and Hispanics.

The President of Mexico was responding to recent calls for action from Republican lawmakers, including military action, to crack down on the ongoing smuggling crisis.

Earlier this week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that he intends to introduce legislation that would designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and authorize the U.S. to use military force to go into Mexico and destroy the drug networks.

It is now time to change the game on how we deal with Mexican drug cartels.— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 9, 2023

“We’re going to unleash the fury and might of the United States against these cartels,” Graham said. “We’re going to destroy their business model and their lifestyle because our national security and the security of the United States as a whole depends on us taking decisive action.”

“Not to invade Mexico, not to shoot Mexican airplanes down, but to destroy drug labs that are poisoning Americans,” he said according to Fox News.

Former President Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton on Friday argued against labeling Mexican drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations

“I don’t underestimate their threat. I’ve been talking about it for a long time. We were very worried about it in the Trump administration. The cartels in Mexico, the cartels in Colombia have been growing in strength,” Bolton said on NewsNation’s “Morning in America.”

“But I think it fuzzes things up to label something as bad as the drug cartels a terrorist organization,” Bolton continued. “They’re not like Hamas or Hezbollah. It’s a different threat; it’s a serious problem. As I say, I’m not underestimating it at all, but I think rhetorical gimmicks don’t help advance policy.”

The DEA said in December that “most of the fentanyl trafficked by the Sinaloa and CJNG Cartels is being mass-produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals sourced largely from China.”

Members of a Mexican cartel kidnapped four Americans who traveled across the border from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, last week. Two of the Americans and an innocent Mexican bystander died during the incident involving the Gulf Cartel, according to U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Liberal Congresswoman Cori Bush, D-Mo., isn’t used to being in the spotlight but right now all eyes are on a member of her security team.

Bush’s bodyguard, Nathaniel Davis, has invited backlash over his claims to be a master of psychic self-defense — born 109 trillion years ago — along with his anti-semitic comments. The Washington Free Beacon confirmed that Davis is, in fact, a St. Louis, Missouri, spiritual guru known as Aha Sen Piankhy who teaches classes on how to read minds, summon mythical beings and maintain urban gardens “to avoid having to buy food from the Jews.”

Davis initially gained notoriety over his claim to host a number of supernatural abilities, including the ability to summon hurricanes, levitate and retrieve winning lottery numbers “from the spirit realm.”

Nathaniel Davis demanded The Free Beacon retract a previous article in which the outlet detailed Davis’s connections with Bush and history of advancing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Per the original report from The Free Beacon:

When Davis, who did not return requests for comment, is not protecting the congresswoman, he spends his time teaching St. Louis’s black community to grow their own food—so they can liberate themselves from a genocidal Jewish cabal that runs the world.

“I’m going come teach the people how to survive. It’s what I came to this planet for in this lifetime,” Davis said in a July 17, 2020, Facebook live stream. “I’m 109 trillion years old in this galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy.”

Davis has advanced a number of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including the belief that the Rothschild family “runs the Western Hemisphere” and unleashed the COVID-19 pandemic to murder 99 percent of the human population. Davis is also a proponent of QAnon, according to a Facebook post he shared in December 2018.

“You got the global elite looking to kill every last one of us. They want to wipe out half the population of the planet,” Davis said in a July 17, 2020, Facebook live stream.

However, despite Davis’s history of anti-Semitic comments, the bodyguard said it’s impossible for him to be anti-Semitic because he himself is a member of the Tribe of Issachar, one of the lost tribes of Israel.

“That makes me Hebrew. How can I be anti-Semitic?” Davis asked The Free Beacon, adding, “You’re literally dealing with the priesthood, literally.”

“If you could retract the whole anti-Semite because I’m not, man. I’m not,” Davis said. “I got bar mitzvah’ed in this city. There’s no way I can be anti-Semite. No way. You didn’t complete your homework.”

The bodyguard also asserted he never made any claims about the Rothschild family or promoted any anti-semitic conspiracies.

“I didn’t make any type of statement dogging anybody of any nationality or background,” Davis told The Free Beacon. “Didn’t do that. That’s not how I move.”

It’s not exactly clear how David came to work for the congresswoman. However, a deep dive by The Free Beacon revealed the congresswoman’s personal Facebook page shows that she is friends with “Aha Davis Zadok El,” one of Davis’s Facebook accounts. There, he claims to be a member of the “Priesthood of the Sun Moon Sect.” Davis’s various Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts are riddled with references to the “Priesthood of the Sun Moon Sect.”

Priesthood Of The Sun Moon Sect
It’s an Agricultural, Philosophical,Martial Science Temple . We are all from different Martial Science Backgrounds.
You have to be able to Heal before you learn to Battle. Martial Science. Study of healing arts as well as battle arts. pic.twitter.com/hYxWG74ay1— Nathaniel (@davis3rf) February 5, 2023

Davis has earned over $137,000 providing “security services” for Bush since 2020, according to FEC filings, the latest of which showed disbursements of $5,000 in December 2022. 

Citing a “non-disclosure agreement,” Davis refused to comment on the “security services” he has provided to Bush.

“I can’t talk to you about that,” Davis said when pressed for details about his non-disclosure agreement.

The Free Beacon reported that Davis changed his story minutes later and denied ever mentioning a non-disclosure agreement, claiming it would be false to report that he did.

READ NEXT: Mexican Drug Cartels Worried About GOP Calls To Use American Military Against Them

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Is Ben & Jerry’s on the brink of collapse?

The woke ice cream company is facing a class action lawsuit over its supply chain that allegedly employs migrant child labor.

The lawsuit followed an exposé from The New York Times, which uncovered child labor infractions by major U.S. companies. The report said migrant child labor is used to process milk in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

According to the Daily Caller, plaintiff Dovid Tyrnauer alleges he would not have purchased or would have paid less for Ben & Jerry’s products if he had known migrant child labor was used. The ice cream brand aligns itself with ethically-sourced products, which the plaintiff claims is a “breach of consumer trust” that amounts to “pompous virtue-signaling.”

“If migrant children needed to work full time, it was preferable for them to have jobs at a well-monitored workplace,” said Ben & Jerry’s head of values-led sourcing, Cheryl Pinto.

The class action lawsuit also claims Ben & Jerry’s uses social justice issues as part of its marketing. The ice cream seemingly promotes politicians such as Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama. They also make limited ice creams for social justice issues such as “Change Is Brewing” for police reform in 2021, “Pecan Resist” against former President Donald Trump in 2019 and “Empower Mint” for alleged voter suppression in 2016. The most recent ice cream in 2023 promotes the “mission to end modern slavery in cocoa farming.”

It’s hard to celebrate 4/20 when so many people of color are still being arrested for pot. We have to do better. Learn more: https://t.co/DPCcqND0SI pic.twitter.com/fLsngGteOF— Ben & Jerry’s (@benandjerrys) April 20, 2019

The murder of George Floyd was the result of inhumane police brutality that is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy. https://t.co/YppGJKHkyN pic.twitter.com/YABzgQMf69— Ben & Jerry’s (@benandjerrys) June 2, 2020

Following The Times report, Ben & Jerry’s issued a lengthy statement in response to the claims.

“We are deeply concerned by the claims made in this story, and do not tolerate any suppliers who are not adhering to the law. Let us be extremely clear: Ben & Jerry’s stands in strong opposition to child labor. We have a long history of standing for justice and equity, and using our business to improve the lives and livelihoods of those we serve and work with. These beliefs do not stop at our company’s supply chain,” Ben & Jerry’s said.

“It is an established fact that the dairy industry comes with profound social and environmental challenges. It is with this understanding that we, over the lifetime of the company, have sought to implement innovative solutions on dairy farms that promote thriving livelihoods for farmers and farmworkers, support animal welfare, and mitigate the negative environmental impacts of dairy farming.” the company continues.

READ NEXT: Why Is Russia Firing Nuclear-Capable Hypersonic Missiles At Ukraine Now?

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Documents show that the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) sold $3.6 million in shares of the failed financial institution’s parent company several weeks before its collapse—the biggest U.S. bank failure since 2008 that sent a shudder of anxiety across markets.

A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that Greg Becker, who joined SVB as a loan officer three decades ago before becoming CEO about a decade later, sold 12,451 shares of the bank’s parent company SVB Financial Group on Feb. 27.

Becker sold the shares in accordance with a trading plan filed on Jan. 26, a little over a month before the group sent a letter to stakeholders (pdf) saying it was looking to raise over $2 billion in capital after taking losses.

An inquiry sent to SVB outside of normal working hours asking whether Becker was aware of the bank’s plans to try and raise capital was not immediately returned.

The announcement sent SVB stock plunging and prompted its lightning-fast unwind. The bank’s shares fell more than 60 percent after the announcement, wiping out $9.4 billion in market value and sparking fears of contagion.

“Lots of chatter today about the possibility of generalized U.S. banking system stress due to SVB troubles. Three summary things on this: While the U.S. banking system as a whole is solid, and it is, that does not mean that every bank is,” stated economist Mohamed A. El-Erian in a tweet.

SVB Collapses, FDIC Steps In

SVB failed on March 10, just days after the bank sent the notification signaling its scramble to raise capital after reporting a $1.8 billion loss after being forced to sell Treasury bonds to meet its deposit obligations.

California regulators ordered the bank shut and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver.

The FDIC, which has a mandate to protect depositors in case of bank failure and insure their deposits up to a coverage limit of $250,000, said in a statement that all insured depositors will have full access to their covered deposits by March 13.

SVB had approximately $209.0 billion in total assets and roughly $175.4 billion in total deposits as of Dec. 31, according to the FDIC.

“At the time of closing, the amount of deposits in excess of the insurance limits was undetermined,” the FDIC said. “The amount of uninsured deposits will be determined once the FDIC obtains additional information from the bank and customers.”

As of the end of 2022, SVB had around 89 percent of its $175 billion in deposits that were uninsured.

The FDIC said that it will pay uninsured depositors an advance dividend sometime next week. Uninsured depositors will be given receivership certificates for the uninsured portion of their deposits and, as the FDIC sells SVB’s assets, depositors may receive additional future payments.

SVB is the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis when Washington Mutual collapsed.

Sheila Bair, who helmed the FDIC during the global financial crisis, told Reuters in an interview that bank regulators are likely now turning their attention to other banks that may have high amounts of uninsured deposits and unrealized losses, two factors that contributed to SVB‘s quick failure.

“These banks that have large amounts of institutional uninsured money … that’s going to be hot money that runs if there’s a sign of trouble,” Bair said.

The sequence of events that led to SVB‘s rapid collapse include it selling U.S. Treasuries to lock in funding costs due to expectations of higher interest rates.

Faced with persistently high inflation, the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates rapidly and officials have warned of further tightening ahead.

US Banks ‘Generally in a Strong Financial Condition’

Several days before SVB failed, FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg warned bankers gathered in Washington that financial institutions face higher levels of unrealized losses, as the Fed’s rapid interest rate increases have driven down the value of longer-term securities.

“The good news about this issue is that banks are generally in a strong financial condition … On the other hand, unrealized losses weaken a bank’s future ability to meet unexpected liquidity needs,” Gruenberg said.

Gruenberg’s remarks came three days before SVB announced it was looking to raise capital.

The speed of the SVB crash stunned observers and blindsided markets, wiping out more than $100 billion in market value for U.S. banks in two days.

Several experts said any ripple effects in the rest of the banking sector are likely to be limited. Part of this is because bigger banks have more diverse portfolios and depositors than SVB, which was highly reliant on the startup sector.

“We do not believe there is contagion risk for the rest of the banking sector,” said David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, an investment research firm.

“The deposit base from the major banks is much more diversified than SVB and the big banks are in good financial health,” he added.

SVB’s collapse could lead to calls for tougher regulation.

Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The United States risks losing its pension funds in China as the regime seeks to undermine the economic base of America, according to Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association.

Billionaire investor Mark Mobius recently said that the Chinese regime has taken “very significant” action to prevent him from withdrawing capital from Chinese equities since his HSBC account is situated in Shanghai.

“I can’t get an explanation of why they’re doing this. It’s just amazing. They’re putting [up] all kinds of barriers,” Mobius told the Fox Business Network on March 2. “They don’t say, ‘No, you can’t get your money out,’ but they say, ‘Give us all the records from 20 years of how you’ve made this money’ and so forth. It’s crazy.”

Copley told NTD’s “China in Focus”: “There’s a global fiction abroad at the moment, which is that the economy in the People’s Republic of China is in for a soft landing. It’s not going to be that soft. It’s going to be one which has worldwide ramifications because it will cut into the pension funds, particularly of people around the world but particularly the retirees in the United States.”

BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, is the first foreign-owned company to receive a license to operate in China’s $3.5 trillion mutual fund industry, Forbes reported.

Meanwhile, many state governments in the United States have invested their pension funds with BlackRock. According to a 2021 report (pdf) from Consumers’ Research, Washington, Florida, and New York were the top three investors, investing $13.8 billion, $10.7 billion, and $9.8 billion, respectively.

Undermining the West Amid Economic Woes

According to the expert, “China is basically in a very, very weak economic position.”

“There’s no evidence that the private sector itself is stimulating growth or that there is a growth in consumer demand. Quite the contrary—people are very, very gun-shy after the events of the last couple of years, and are not spending in the way the [Chinese] Communist Party had projected,” he said.

“The major sectors of the economy, and particularly the property sector, look unlikely to revive at best.”

Copley said China is heavily dependent on food imports. In 2022, China imported more than 85 percent of its soybeans (95 million tons), mainly from the United States, Brazil, and Argentina.

And thus, he said, it’s hard for China to build up an internal marketplace that “will be enough to stimulate economic growth and operations.”

Copley said he believes that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has realized that economically and strategically outgrowing the West, particularly the United States, is now very difficult.

“So he must resort to undermining the economic and strategic base of his adversaries, particularly the United States,” Copley said.

“So the view is, if China cannot grow strategically enough to defeat the West, then the West must be reduced by indirect means economically, politically, and so on, so that the West becomes economically deprived and politically unstable.

“And so that’s really the very, very poor option base which Xi Jinping has available to him.”

Deterring Invasion of Taiwan

Copley said that Xi could launch an invasion of Taiwan to shift blame for the country’s economic turmoil and urge the United States and its allies to take steps to deter it.

“The United States needs to demonstrate a greater physical commitment to supporting the Taiwanese Republic of China forces,” he said.

“Other countries, such as Australia, must show more open support militarily for Taiwan.

“It’s critical that the United States and its allies show real resolve in letting Xi Jinping know that an open war is not an option which is viable, and showing that an open war is something that he absolutely will lose, and it will cost him his party and probably his life.”

Andrew Moran and Frank Fang contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Recently, “COVID-19” and “Fauci” have been trending on Twitter. And when you click on those hashtags, you don’t get regurgitated government messaging.

Instead, you get declarations such as this one from Dr. Eli David, which has been viewed 1.2 million times: “Fauci was wrong about lockdowns, masks, double-masks, Remdesivir, vaccine, boosters, and virus origin. Was Fauci right about anything? Give me a single thing about Covid which Fauci got right.”

Tired of Half-Truths

It’s becoming increasingly clear from social media and elsewhere that people are tired of being lied to by government health authorities. They’re beginning to realize that these agencies don’t have their best interests in mind.

I stopped to chat with an older couple enjoying the sun last week. They had set up two folding chairs by the water so they could watch the passersby and look at the shimmering Atlantic Ocean.

“You just have to enjoy every second,” the wife said. “My husband has dementia. It’s been hard. You don’t know when you’re going to go. My best friend called me sobbing two weeks ago. They found her 46-year-old son dead in his bed. No one knows why.”

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“Do you know if he was vaccinated?” I asked in the gentlest tone I could muster. “I know that may sound like a strange question but … we are seeing myocarditis and pericarditis in young men post-vaccination—the Florida surgeon general no longer recommends mRNA vaccines for young men—and at least some of these sudden unexplained deaths may be due to that.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said. “But I’m sure he was vaccinated. I’ve done so many at this point, I’m radioactive!”

“We’ve had, what, five?” she said, turning to her husband. “It’s getting ridiculous. We still got COVID, twice. We’re not doing any more.”

Deaths Continue

There has been a surge in sudden, unexplained, age-inappropriate deaths in at least 30 countries in the industrialized world.

In Ireland, so many people died in January that funerals had to be postponed, according to local news.

Ed Dowd, in his new book, “‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” argues that the sudden deaths in young people in industrialized countries are due to mRNA vaccines.

Dowd shows that the number of excess deaths in the United States attributed to COVID-19 in 2020 was actually much lower than the huge spike in sudden deaths that began in 2021 after the vaccines started being widely distributed.

Importantly, most of the 2021 deaths, which occurred mostly in people aged 18 to 64, weren’t attributed to the disease.

“From February 2021 to March 2022, millennials experienced the equivalent of a Vietnam war, with more than 60,000 excess deaths,” Dowd wrote. He is an expert in following and anticipating trends and a founding partner of a global investment company, Phinance Technologies.

“The Vietnam War took 12 years to kill the same number of healthy young people we’ve just seen die in 12 months.”

Swine Flu Vaccine Program Halted After 3 Deaths

On Oct. 13, 1976, The New York Times ran a story about the swine flu vaccine.

The headline read “Swing Flu Program Is Halted in 9 States as 3 Die After Shots.”

As of Feb. 24, nearly 34,580 deaths had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which is known for its under-reporting (pdf), after COVID-19 shots.

With deaths reported for all vaccines combined, the number jumped from 420 deaths in 2020 (before COVID-19 vaccination) to 22,278 deaths in 2021 (with COVID-19 vaccination), a 5,304 percent increase.

Brave Doctors Around the World Speaking Out

With the mounting evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine is doing more harm than good, doctors and health experts around the world, many of whom are risking losing their jobs, are now speaking out against continuing to give mRNA injections.

Especially problematic, they say, is giving mRNA vaccines to young people, for whom COVID-19 is usually a mild, easily overcome viral infection.

In May 2020, we wrote our first article on evidence-based science-forward researchers and clinicians who have spoken out against propaganda posing as science, headlined “May the Force Be With Them: Scientists Fight Back.”

Since then, we have continued to document and report on a global phenomenon: Conscientious doctors and medical scientists who follow the facts say that mRNA vaccinations do more harm than good and that it’s time to stop the harm.

Japanese Cardiovascular Surgeon Says Halt the Boosters

Dr. Kenji Yamamoto, a cardiovascular surgeon in Japan, argued that giving any further COVID-19 vaccines is simply too dangerous.

“As a safety measure, further booster vaccinations should be discontinued,” Yamamoto wrote in a peer-reviewed letter published in the journal Virology. He has seen lethal cases of vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia.

He and his colleagues have found that the vaccines have led some patients to develop marked immune dysfunction. Some have died from antibiotic-resistant infections, deaths which Yamamoto attributed to vaccine-induced immune problems.

“To date, when comparing the advantages and disadvantages of mRNA vaccines, vaccination has been commonly recommended. As the COVID-19 pandemic becomes better controlled, vaccine sequelae are likely to become more apparent,” he wrote.

“It has been hypothesized that there will be an increase in cardiovascular diseases, especially acute coronary syndromes, caused by the spike proteins in genetic vaccines. Besides the risk of infections owing to lowered immune functions, there is a possible risk of unknown organ damage caused by the vaccine that has remained hidden without apparent clinical presentations, mainly in the circulatory system.”

British Cardiologist Speaks Out

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has been staunchly in favor of vaccines for his entire medical career, initially defended the COVID-19 vaccine program.

In fact, he was among the first to get them.

But after spending countless hours researching the vaccines and carefully reviewing all the available scientific data, Malhotra no longer recommends them.

He now believes that these vaccines are causing “unprecedented harms,” as he explained in the recent documentary “Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion.”

Moreover, he has published several peer-reviewed articles explaining the data. “Re-analysis of randomized controlled trials using the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology suggests a greater risk of serious adverse events from the vaccines than being hospitalized from COVID-19,” Malhotra wrote.

Australian Cardiologist Calls to Stop the Shots

Dr. Ross Walker, a cardiologist based in Sydney, Australia, has seen about 70 cases of vaccine-induced heart problems following mRNA vaccines in his practice alone.

He now believes that the mRNA vaccines are “very pro-inflammatory” and that they should never have been mandated.

In his patients, the heart problems—which include palpitations, chest pain, and shortness of breath—have been lasting for up to half a year following vaccination, he said.

“We don’t need to use mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna,” Walker told the Daily Mail Australia.

A Virologist and Immunologist Speaks Out

Yuhong Dong is a medical doctor who writes for The Epoch Times and has more than 20 years of experience in virological and immunological research.

For her doctorate from Beijing University in China, Dong specialized in infectious diseases. From 2010 to 2017, she was the senior medical scientific expert and pharmacovigilance leader at Novartis Headquarters in Switzerland. During that time, she won four company awards.

“There is ample evidence, based on preclinical and clinical studies, demonstrating that these COVID-19 vaccines do not protect people against SARS-CoV-2 infection, but incur serious adverse events including abnormal blood clots, cardiovascular events, strokes, sudden death, immune disorders, neurological injuries, and reproductive events,” Dong said via email.

“At the general population level, the risks weigh high over the benefits. We should take a decent but rational decision to stop the COVID-19 vaccine program immediately.”

The solution to building strong immunity to survive viral infections, Dong said, isn’t mRNA technology.

Instead, she wrote, we need to teach people “how to preserve or bolster their divine-endowed natural immunity [and] change their detrimental lifestyles and mindsets.”

‘Should Be Summarily Stopped’

Dr. Bose Ravenel, a retired pediatrician based in North Carolina who spent 31 years in private practice, 11 years as an academic pediatrician, and six years practicing integrative pediatric medicine, said, “The COVID-19 vaccine program should be summarily stopped because signals for adverse effects, including death, are unprecedented.”

Ravenel told The Epoch Times that he has clocked more than 4,500 hours studying SARS-CoV-2 and the vaccines.

“The risk of death or serious illness from current COVID strains is statistically low, effective ambulatory treatment is available, and the absolute risk reduction from the vaccines is 0.5 to 1.6 percent—that’s very low,” he said.

“These mRNA vaccines fail to achieve the foundational function of a vaccine of stopping infection or transmission to others.”

‘Belongs in the Dustbin of History’

Dr. Thomas Redwood has been an emergency room physician for more than 30 years. He was an ER physician within the Wellstar and Piedmont health care systems in Atlanta until his privileges were terminated for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates; he now practices in Alabama.

“We should end the COVID vaccine program, full stop,” Redwood told The Epoch Times. “What was touted as safe and effective is neither.”

Redwood also said he’s surprised that the medical community is still defending—and even promoting—these vaccines.

“Any other vaccine with a similar adverse event profile has been pulled from the market,” he said. “The vaccine’s inability to prevent infection and therefore transmission further highlights why this experimental drug belongs in the dustbin of history.”

Cardio-Toxic

Dr. Kirk A. Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist and the medical director of the nonprofit For Hearts and Souls, said the spike protein is a known cardio-toxin.

“It is now known to function as a cardio-toxin,” Milhoan wrote in an email.

According to Milhoan, knowingly having our bodies produce a cardio-toxin with the hope that it will help protect us against a respiratory virus with a very low infection-fatality rate makes no sense.

After This Health Assault, We All Need to Heal

Dr. Cammy Benton, a family physician in private practice in Huntersville, North Carolina, said she was skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine program from early on.

“The science from the beginning simply did not meet criteria for approval for use,” Benton told The Epoch Times.

“Ongoing data confirms that the vaccine failed on its promises and has caused significant harms, not only on a physical level but on a psychosocial level on a global scale.

“We need to heal on all levels after this assault on our freedoms and our health.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A class action suit filed in California alleges LG Electronics USA, Inc. sold gas range stoves in the United States without properly notifying customers of toxic emissions prior to their purchases.

The suit comes as the industry faces attacks and efficiency proposals by the Biden administration that would remove up to half the current gas range ovens on the U.S. market.

A California woman who purchased an LG gas stove from Costco in October 2022 claims in the suit that she was unaware of the “risks” associated with the product before purchasing.

“Ms. Sherzai relied on the representations on the marketing materials disclosing risks,” read the lawsuit. “The marketing materials did not disclose or warn that the product emitted harmful pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides. Thus, at the time of purchase, Plaintiff was unaware that the product emitted harmful pollutants such as nitrogen oxide.”

According to the latest court docket, LG has not yet responded to the claims in the suit.

John Taylor, senior vice president of LG Electronics USA, Inc. said in an email to The Epoch Times, “as a matter of policy, LG Electronics USA doesn’t generally comment on pending legal matters such as this.”

Claims of False Advertising and More

The California woman in the suit (pdf) alleges LG committed several crimes including violating California’s Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act, along with breach of implied warranty, violation of state consumer protection statutes, breach of implied warranties on behalf of plaintiff and the nationwide class, fraudulent omission, and unjust enrichment.

She claims the suit on behalf of other customers who purchased qualifying LG ranges while living in the United States during the applicable time frame.

“There are tens or hundreds of thousands of class members,” attorneys wrote in the suit. “The precise number of class members is unknown to Plaintiff at this time.” Attorneys say members of the proposed suit “can be identified through public notice.”

The woman, Ms. Sherzai, alleges gas stoves are linked to respiratory illness and that LG knew of the risk without properly notifying customers of risks.

To make her case, attorneys point to “recent studies,” including one by Consumer Reports that says “gases can worsen asthma and other lung diseases.”

They go on to cite Bloomberg as stating gas stoves “emit air pollutants … at levels the EPA and World Health Organization have said are unsafe and linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer, and other health conditions.”

Bloomberg cites reports from the Institute for Policy Integrity and the American Chemical Society.

Court documents claim about 40 percent of American households use natural gas stoves daily to cook in their homes.

Other claims cited by the plaintiffs in the suit claim nitrogen oxides are emitted which can be “hazardous to human health.”

A Harvard University Health article cited states, “A recent study published by researchers at Stanford calculated that emission of nitrogen dioxide from certain gas burners or ovens rose above the standard set for outdoors by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) within a few minutes.”

Other claims by Sherzai are that nitrogen oxide exposure is linked to cardiovascular effects, diabetes, poor birth outcomes, cancer, cognitive issues among children, and asthma.

Claims LG Knew of Defects

“Since the 1980s, the natural gas industry—of which Defendant is a constituent—has worried that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission would regulate gas stove emissions due to indoor air quality concerns,” the suit stated.

“Like other makers of gas stoves, Defendant monitors and keeps track of research on the health effects of its products. This is diligence that large companies like Defendant routinely do when selling a consumer product. Defendant is aware of the fact that its products emit harmful pollutants. It is further aware that use of gas stoves increases the rates of respiratory illness in adults and children.”

Sherzai claims LG could have implemented available technologies to reduce alleged danger to consumers, including jet-powered infrared gas-range burners.

“Another design proposed in the 1980s was the use of a flame insert, which cuts the nitrous oxides emissions ‘more than 40 percent’ when the burner is turned on high, and even more at low burner settings,” plaintiffs allege. “Despite this, Defendant failed to use an alternative design to avoid these harms and reduce harmful pollutants from gas stoves.”

Claims of Failure to Warn and Overcharging Consumers

Sherzai and attorneys claim LG should have warned its customers of the pollutant risks.

“While Defendant is aware of the harmful health effects of gas cooking, everyday consumers are unaware of these risks,” attorneys for Sherzai wrote. “Consumers shopping for a new oven, range, or stove have very little information about the health risks of gas appliances. Consumers remain unaware because nothing on Defendant’s packaging or labels suggest that the gas stoves regularly emit pollutants that are harmful to human health. Further, the labels and warnings do not mention any risk of nitrogen oxides.”

Sherzai also said in the suit that if customers knew of the “defective design” of LG gas ovens the price would drop “dramatically.” She also alleged through attorneys she would have paid “significantly less” for the product “had she known that it emitted harmful pollutants.”

“If consumers knew the truth, demand for Defendant’s prices would drop, and Defendant could not sell their products at current prices. In addition, the defective design of gas stoves reduces their value. Consumers pay for a stove that is safe for home cooking, but receive a less valuable stove—one with a defective design that carries significant (and undisclosed) air pollution risks.”

Plaintiffs in the suit seek a jury trial as well as damages, restitution, and other costs or relief as determined by the Court.

Biden Administration Latest Action on Gas Ranges

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) this week advanced a request for information on gas stove hazards after it was filed by a commissioner who has floated banning the appliances.

The agency announced on March 1 that it’s seeking information from the public “on chronic chemical hazards from gas ranges.”

The commission released a draft public notice on the request for information but hasn’t released the final notice, which should be published in the Federal Register this month, a commission spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

Zachary Stieber and Allen Zhong contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has assumed control of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) to protect depositors from losing all of their money after it was closed by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.

Federal banking regulators on March 10 took custody of the country’s 16th largest bank, which was a top lender for American tech and life sciences firms and start-ups, according to a press release.

The collapse of the California bank is the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual in 2008, during the last major bank crisis.

The FDIC set up a so-called bridge bank, the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB), and as the receiver, transferred all of the insured deposits of SVB there and so all insured assets, up to the $250,000 coverage limit, are safe and will be accessible to depositors starting March 13.

Although the main office and all branches of SVB will reopen at the beginning of next week, the DINB will now control and manage its operations.

The official coverage limit is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category, so some depositors could potentially have more than $250,000 insured.

However, the FDIC added that it “will pay uninsured depositors an advance dividend within the next week” and will receive a receivership certificate for the remaining amount of their uninsured funds.

Future dividend payments may be made to uninsured depositors, while the FDIC sells off the assets of SVB.

“The failure of @SVB_Financial could destroy an important long-term driver of the economy as VC-backed companies rely on SVB for loans and holding their operating cash,” warned Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman in a tweet just before the bank failure.  

Silicon Valley Lender Was In Trouble For Some Time

It is unverified how much money was pulled out of SVB yesterday after its announcement of a $2.25 billion share sale plan sparked a run on the bank.

The massive interest rate hikes over the past year have caused the value of its bonds to fall, particularly those that take many years to mature, and forced the bank to reinvest the proceeds from its sales into shorter-term assets.

SVB suffered significant losses on its portfolio, which was heavily invested in U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, all of which have taken a beating.

The bank’s shares fell more than 60 percent after its March 8 announcement, wiping out $9.4 billion in market value.

Executives publicly stated that they would dump $21 billion worth of holdings at a $1.75 billion loss, while raising $500 million from venture firm General Atlantic to cover rapidly declining customer deposits and bond losses to save the firm.

General Atlantic has yet to make a comment, only hours after announcing an agreement to invest $500 million in the now-failed bank.

SVB CEO Greg Becker told clients earlier this week to “stay calm. That’s my ask. We’ve been there for 40 years, supporting you, supporting the portfolio companies, supporting venture capitalists.”

However, many depositors, along with many of their venture capital backers, panicked and pulled their money out anyway.

Top venture capital firms like Coatue and Founders Fund encouraged portfolio companies to strongly consider pulling money out of SVB, while Sequoia Capital reiterated its diversification strategy after concerns grew over the bank’s stability.

The California lender had approximately $209 billion in total assets and $175 billion in deposits at the end of 2022.

However, the FDIC said that its current deposit total at this time is “undetermined.”

The amount of insured and uninsured deposits was undetermined at the time of closing and will be determined once the FDIC obtains additional information from the bank and customers.

Economists Hope Fed Will Slow Down Interest Rate Hikes After Bank Failure.

The news of SVB’s failure may cause banks to be more reluctant to offer loans, including rival lenders that are flush with new deposits.

Some economists hope that the news will discourage the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates higher.

The number of investors saying that the likelihood of the central bank would enact a 50-basis-point rate increase, declined today, but the February jobs report could be another factor.

“Lots of chatter today about the possibility of generalized U.S. banking system stress due to SVB troubles. Three summary things on this: While the U.S. banking system as a whole is solid, and it is, that does not mean that every bank is,” stated economist Mohamed A. El-Erian in a tweet.

“Due to the volatility in yields after the prior protracted period of leverage-enabling policy, the most vulnerable currently are those vulnerable to both interest rate and credit risk. Contagion risk and the systemic threat can be easily contained by careful balance sheet management and avoiding more policy mistakes,” he added.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

State Rep. Mike Zabel allegedly propositioned and stalked colleague

A Pennsylvania state House Democrat resigned from office after three women accused the lawmaker of sexual harassment, the Washington Post reported.

Pennsylvania state representative Mike Zabel on Wednesday announced his resignation, saying he wants to “focus on my family and my health.” Among the three women alleging harassment is a fellow state representative, who said that Zabel inappropriately touched her.

Republican representative Abby Major said she and Zabel were at a bar last November when Zabel touched her, propositioned her, and “was being a creep.” Zabel, who was “clearly intoxicated,” followed Major to her car, forcing her to ask a colleague to walk out with her, she said.

Zabel is just the latest Democratic lawmaker to face accusations of sexual misconduct. Former Oregon Democratic lawmaker Diego Hernandez resigned amid accusations of coercive sexual harassment in 2021, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Though some colleagues came to his defense, Hernandez quickly resigned, saying he wished to “focus on my health and family.”

Zabel’s former campaign manager, who was also among those filing complaints against the Pennsylvania representative, voiced concern over Zabel’s alcohol consumption.

“My illness has caused some behavior that I regret, and I agree that additional intervention is necessary for me to fully recover,” Zabel wrote in response to the allegations.

The Pennsylvania House changed its rules recently to allow non-employees to file sexual harassment complaints after a lobbyist said Zabel had victimized her four years ago.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

TikTok has retained a top Democratic public relations firm whose founding partner is a top adviser to Joe Biden. The move is part of a charm offensive to fight regulation of the popular social media app and comes as the White House has signaled support to ban it in the United States.

SKDK will provide “communications support” for TikTok as it faces bipartisan legislation that could ban its social media platform in the United States because of its links to the Chinese government. SKDK would be a powerful ally in those efforts. Anita Dunn, a founding partner of SKDK, serves as a senior adviser to Biden. In that role, she has shaped the White House response to the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s offices. She and her husband, Biden lawyer Bob Bauer, have been called “the couple at the center of Biden’s inner circle.”

Several other former SKDK employees serve in the administration, including deputy White House communications director Kate Berner. SKDK, which has been called the “go-to communications firm” for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) alumni, recently poached Schumer communications director Justin Goodman to lead crisis communications in its Washington, D.C., office.

American intelligence officials have warned that Beijing could use TikTok to surveil Americans and pump pro-China propaganda to the app’s users. The Biden administration has already ordered federal agencies to remove TikTok from government phones. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has proposed an outright ban of the app in the United States, a move that would be devastating for TikTok, which reportedly has more than 100 million users in the United States alone.

Schumer said last month that a national ban of TikTok “should be looked at,” but he has not committed to a position on the topic. The New York Democrat has come under fire before for refusing to hold votes to regulate other Big Tech companies. Schumer’s critics pointed out that his two daughters are lobbyists for Amazon and Facebook.

Multiple Schumer veterans work at SKDK. Mike Morey, a former communications director, is a partner at SKDK’s New York City office. Justin Goodman, the Schumer aide who joined SKDK in November, will handle the firm’s “corporate, crisis communications, and public affairs clients.” SKDK touts Goodman’s ability to “secure favorable media coverage in major print and cable news outlets.”

TikTok, which grants Beijing access to its user data, has mounted a full-court press in Washington and Europe to stave off regulation of the app. The company has recently hosted meetings with think tanks and technology trade groups in Washington to tout a proposal that would let the company continue operations while putting up a firewall between it and China. TikTok’s army of lobbyists have also swarmed Capitol Hill to pitch their proposals to Congress. The company is mounting a similar initiative in Europe called “Project Clover.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick generated controversy following an interview this week in which he accused his white adoptive parents of being “problematic” and perpetuating “racism” in his upbringing. Going unmentioned in Kaepernick’s interview was the problematic behavior of the corporate sponsors that have enriched him to the tune of millions of dollars, companies that have been implicated in slavery and child labor in their supply chains.

Nike, which negotiated a deal in 2018 with Kaepernick reportedly worth millions of dollars per year, has long faced accusations of perpetuating abusive sweatshop labor in its shoe factories. Even after years of commitments from the company to improve its workers’ conditions, the Washington Post reported in 2020 that hundreds of members of China’s oppressed Uyghur Muslim minority are forced to assemble Nike shoes.

Ben & Jerry’s, an ice cream company known for being politically outspoken on climate change, race, and its opposition to Israel, sponsors Kaepernick through a non-dairy ice cream flavor featuring his image called “Change the Whirled.” Despite its commitments to progressive values and fair work practices, Ben & Jerry’s was implicated in a New York Times exposé last month, which revealed that migrant children process the milk used in the company’s ice cream.

A Ben & Jerry’s executive defended the company’s labor practices to the Times, saying “that if migrant children needed to work full time, it was preferable for them to have jobs at a well-monitored workplace.”

Kaepernick, whose Nike branding features the slogan “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” chose during his interview on CBS this week to speak out instead against his “problematic” upbringing, including his mother’s criticism of his hairstyle when he was a child.

“I know my parents loved me, but there were still very problematic things that I went through,” Kaepernick said Thursday. He pointed to the time his mother said his cornrows made him look “not professional” and “like a little thug” as an example of how “racism” was “perpetuated” in his home.

Kaepernick gained fame as an activist near the end of his NFL career, when he would kneel in protest during the singing of the national anthem. He’s since regularly attracted controversy for his statements, including his declaration that the Trump administration’s killing of Iranian general and terrorist sponsor Qassem Soleimani was one of many “American terrorist attacks” and his claim that the historic Betsy Ross flag is “offensive.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘I am a neocon no more’

What happened: Max Boot, the Washington Post columnist who wears a fedora to conceal his agonizingly hairless dome, formally renounced his neoconservative affiliation on Friday.

“In retrospect, I was wildly overoptimistic about the prospects of exporting democracy by force, underestimating both the difficulties and the costs of such a massive undertaking,” Boot wrote on Twitter, the social networking website where he has shared more than 145,000 posts since 2009. “I am a neocon no more, at least as that term has been understood since 9/11.”

Boot’s tweet included a link to his latest column in Foreign Affairs, titled, “What the Neocons Got Wrong.” Elite liberals have praised the column, which is way too long and ponderous to read, as a “bold” and “thoughtful” work of “intellectual courage.”

Why it matters: This is fantastic news for neocons and other pro-freedom war advocates. God willing, Boot and his stupid hat will never again be associated with the neoconservative movement and its honorable champions—Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Michael Goldfarb, and Jose “Big Boy Pants” Rodriguez, among others.

Good riddance to liberal rubbish!

READ MORE:

2019 Man of the Year: Max Boot

I Forced a Bot to Read 1,000 Max Boot Columns and Write a Max Boot Column of Its Own

Wannabe Soldier Max Boot Insults Army Veterans

CORRECTION: The Truth About Max Boot’s ‘Fancy Top Hat’

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Fifth circuit judge Kyle Duncan is calling on Stanford to axe DEI dean Tirien Steinbach

Fifth Circuit appellate judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who was shouted down by Stanford Law School students as administrators looked on in silence, says the protesters behaved like “dogshit.”

Now, in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Duncan is calling on the school to discipline the students who disrupted his talk and to fire the school’s associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, who stepped in during the event to chastise him and deliver what the judge described as a “bizarre therapy session from hell.”

Duncan’s remarks come after nearly a hundred students at Stanford Law School disrupted his remarks in brazen violation of Stanford University’s free speech policies.

One source of the students’ ire was Duncan’s refusal, in a 2020 opinion, to use a transgender sex offender’s preferred pronouns. The Stanford event, which was sponsored by the law school’s chapter of the Federalist Society, got so out of hand that federal marshals eventually escorted Duncan from the building.

Tirien Steinbach, the school’s diversity dean, arrived on the scene when Duncan himself asked for an administrator to restore order. She then took to the podium and, in a video that has now circulated widely online, accused the judge of causing “harm.”

“Your opinions from the bench land as absolute disenfranchisement” of the students’ rights, Steinbach said, accusing him of “tearing the fabric of this community.”

“Do you have something so incredibly important to say,” she asked him, that it is worth the “division of these people?”

Duncan warned that what happens at Stanford, long the second-ranked law school in the country, behind Yale, is unlikely to stay there. “If enough of these kids get into the legal profession,” he said, “the rule of law will descend into barbarism.”

Neither Steinbach nor Jenny Martinez, the dean of Stanford Law School, responded to a request for comment.

The protest is perhaps the most extreme example yet of law students shouting down conservative speakers. A similar incident occurred at Yale Law School last year when Kristen Waggoner, a prominent Supreme Court litigator, was drowned out by hundreds of students protesting her views on transgender issues. Also last year, students at the University of California-Hastings disrupted a talk with the libertarian law professor Ilya Shapiro, shrieking and jeering each time he opened his mouth.

The tactics used against Duncan were nearly identical. Nearly everyone in the room showed up to disrupt the proceeding, according to Duncan and two members of the Federalist Society, and many of the hundred or so students on hand were holding profane signs, including one that declared: “Duncan can’t find the clit.”

Each time Duncan began to speak, the protesters would heckle him with insults, shouting things like “scumbag!” and “you’re a liar!”

The din became so loud that Duncan asked for an administrator to keep order, according to video of the event. That’s when Steinbach, the associate diversity dean, delivered her remarks. While she reminded students of the law school’s free speech policies, which prohibit the disruption of speakers, she proceeded to stand by while students continued to  heckle Duncan, videos from the event show.

She also expressed sympathy for students who wanted to “reconsider” those free speech policies, given the “harm” Duncan’s appearance had caused.

At least three other administrators—acting dean of student affairs Jeanne Merino, associate director of student affairs Holly Parish, and student affairs coordinator Megan Brown—were present throughout the event, according to Tim Rosenberger, the president of Stanford’s Federalist Society chapter. None of them told the students to allow Duncan to speak without interruption.

Eventually, one of the leaders of the protest instructed the students to “tone down the heckling slightly so we can get to our questions,” a video obtained by the Free Beacon shows. So began a contentious question and answer session between Duncan, who never got to read his prepared remarks, and his critics, who continued to disrupt and jeer as he spoke.

The students appeared to have little familiarity with Duncan’s jurisprudence. Some accused him of suppressing the voting rights of African Americans, Duncan said—only to cite a case in which Duncan had actually dissented from the majority.

Other questions were less academic. “I fuck men, I can find the prostate,” one student asked, according to Rosenberger. “Why can’t you find the clit?”

Duncan was escorted out of a back door by federal marshals, who told him, he said, that they were there to “protect” him.

The meltdown followed a weeklong pressure campaign against members of the Federalist Society, who were personally named and shamed by campus activists.

Over 70 students emailed the group on March 6 asking it to cancel the event or move it to Zoom, arguing that Duncan has “proudly threatened healthcare and basic rights for marginalized communities”—language Steinbach quoted uncritically in an email sent out the morning of the event. Her email, which also reminded students of the school’s free speech policies, nonetheless said the event would be a “significant hit” to students’ sense of belonging.

When the Federalist Society refused to cancel, students began putting up fliers with the names and faces of everyone on the board. “You should be ashamed,” the posters read.

Other posters berated Duncan for opposing same-sex marriage, denying “Black Americans the right to vote,” and denying “trans people the right to self-determination in court”—an apparent reference to a 2020 opinion in which Duncan referred to a male-to-female child pornographer using he/him pronouns.

The public shaming continued the day of the event. As Duncan was being whisked away by marshals, protesters encircled members of the Federalist Society and hurled invective at them, Rosenberg and another Federalist Society member said.

Such tactics have become par for the course at elite law schools. The Yale Law students protesting Waggoner likewise sought to shame the Federalist Society, which had invited her, with posters littered throughout the school.

“Through your attendance” at the event, the posters said, “you are personally complicit, along with the Federalist Society.”

For Duncan, the attempt to shame individual students was the most disturbing part of the Stanford imbroglio.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said. “I’m a life-tenured federal judge. What outrages me is that these kids are being treated like dogshit by fellow students and administrators.”

Update, 3/10/23, 10:00 PM: Shortly after the publication of this story, the dean of Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, said in a statement that the disruption was “not aligned with our institutional commitment to freedom of speech,” adding that “the school is reviewing what transpired.” She did not indicate whether the students involved in the disruption would be disciplined.

Correction, 3/12/23, 2:00 PM: This story originally stated that Stanford’s dean of student affairs, Jory Steel, was present during the disruption. The person in the room was actually Jeanne Merino, the acting dean of student affairs, who is filling in for Steel while she is on a leave of absence. We regret the error.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sponsored by White Claw® Hard Seltzer

What’s happening: South by Southwest, the radical Big Tech woke corporate propaganda and music festival, started on Friday in Austin, Texas.

The 10-day extravaganza, which bills itself as the “essential destination for global professionals,” is sponsored by White Claw® Hard Seltzer, C4 Smart Energy®, Volkswagen, and Porsche, among others. Featured speakers include Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, New Age guru Deepak Chopra, Hollywood actor Robert Downey Jr., DJ Jazzy Jeff, and renowned drag queen activist Gottmik.

What they’re saying: “SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together.” —SXSW promotional material

Look at all this woke corporate nonsense: There are dozens of bonkers panel discussions and other events on the SXSW itinerary for attendees to check out. Here are 17 of the most ridiculous examples we could find, in no particular order.

1) Building an Antiracist Newsroom—Four journalists, including NBC News correspondent and “1619 Project” contributing writer Trymaine Lee, will discuss “the fallacy of ‘objective journalism'” in this “time of great racial reckoning.”

2) Menstrual Dignity: Taboos and Inequality—Enjoy an illuminating discussion about the impact of “menstrual poverty” on “people who menstruate.” This panel is “suitable for audiences with a focus on the [United Nations sustainable development goals] 1,3,4,5,10,11, and 12,” whatever the hell that means.

3) Breaking Binary: Ending Inequity in Intersex Care—Dr. Francis Grimstad, a pediatric gynecologist at Boston Children’s Hospital who specializes in trans reproductive health, will join others to discuss health care for children who identify as intersex, which in case you were wondering is “a general term for a variety of conditions where a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit typical definitions of male or female bodies.”

4) How To Recession Proof Your Diversity Strategy—This workshop will highlight the 10 “key standards that drive diversity in the workplace.” Participants will receive “a score across each of the standards and an overall score to enable them to measure their DEI progress tangibly.”

5) Building an Equitable Psychedelic Medicines System—A panel discussion about whether the increasing acceptance of psychedelic treatments will be “a force for good” or “entrench existing inequalities.”

6) Does “Mind Control for Good” Exist?—Sponsored by Edelman, the global public relations consultancy firm, this panel will discuss how to utilize Brain Computer Interface to save the world without “stripping us of our agency and humanity.”

7) Designing Equity Through an Afrofuturist Lens—This panel of “designers, artists, time travelers, and futurists” will discuss how to use “speculative design to harmonize the experiences of Black people in the past, present, and future.”

8) Featured Session: Chelsea Handler & Jen Psaki—A gabfest featuring the former White House press secretary and the 48-year-old female comedian whose most recent tour was titled “Vaccinated and Horny.”

9) How Will TV Evolve for the Queerest Generation Yet—This “advanced” level panel will seek to answer this burning question.

10) Can the Union of Equity and Tech Save Cannabis?—This session will discuss how the cannabis industry’s problems can be “resolved through equity-based tech solutions.”

11) Not Your Typical Aunty: The Brown Womxn Revolution—This “advanced” level session is sponsored by Velocity Global and appears to focus on “South Asian wom[x]n,” which is not very inclusive.

12) Climate Action 101: Finding Your Climate Squad—This meet and greet will focus on the “importance of intentionally finding a climate community,” and will examine strategies for “coping with eco anxiety.”

13) Hacking Beauty for Accessibility—Listen to an Estée Lauder executive talk about what his company is doing to become “the most inclusive and diverse beauty company in the world.”

14) Driving Inclusivity in Immersive Experience Design—Sponsored by frog, a leading global creative consultancy, this panel will help attendees learn how to “unlock the true power of shared immersive experiences” and take part in the “co-creation of unique emergent narratives.”

15) Featured Session: The Future of Privacy on the Net with Chelsea Manning—The former male soldier convicted on 17 charges of leaking classified information and aiding America’s enemies will discuss the future of internet privacy.

16) Live Performance In The Metaverse—Sponsored by the global accounting firm KPMG, this panel will include commentary from TFM Jonny, a “streaming celebrity, performer, and musician [who] creates hours of content every day in his anime wolf ‘boi’ persona.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Billionaire Bill Gates dismissed the possibility of people making significant changes to their lifestyle, like giving up meat and becoming vegetarians for the sake of countering the alleged effects of climate change.

“I don’t think we can count on people living a impoverished lifestyle as a solution to climate change,” Gates said at an event in India on March 1. “You know, meat consumption in India will be less … That’s wonderful. Will all Indians become vegetarians? Will all Americans become vegetarians? I wouldn’t want to count on it. Anybody who wants to evangelize that, they’re welcome to. I won’t resist in any way.”

Gates had earlier pushed for rich nations to adopt 100 percent synthetic beef that is made from plant proteins like beans or peas, carbs like potato starch, fats like canola or coconut oil, minerals, and flavorings.

In an online interaction on Reddit in January, Gates pushed for the widespread adoption of plant-based meat products.

“For people who want to go Vegan that is great but I don’t think most people will do that. There are companies making ‘beef’ in new ways and people working to still use cows but reduce the methane emissions,” he wrote.

“I have backed a number of innovators in this space including Beyond and Impossible and Memphis. I think eventually these products will be very good even though their share is small today.”

Gates’ push to move away from meat consumption and adopt plant-based alternatives comes as he is busy buying up farmland in America.

According to a July 2022 letter sent by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) seeking Gates’ testimony regarding his farm purchases, the Microsoft founder is the “largest private farmland owner” in the United States, owning more than 270,000 acres of farmland in 19 states.

Energy Consumption

At the India event, Gates also talked about energy consumption. He pointed out that if governments are willing to implement tough laws, air conditioning can simply be banned, which would be “good for the climate.” However, he admitted that this would not happen as a warmer climate will keep raising the demand for cooling.

“But as India gets warmer and warmer, I’m betting the demand for air condition is going to skyrocket. The country that has the most air conditioning by far is the United States. Even Europe doesn’t have what we have. And so, as it gets hotter, you know, you demand more electricity, which if it’s not green, then you’re in a positive feedback loop,” he said.

Gates also pointed out that most of the demand for more energy, cement, and steel is coming from middle-income nations like India, “where even if you stop at, say a quarter of American energy intensity, that climate change is very, very dramatic.”

The Microsoft co-founder also suggested that even when the United States uses “half as much energy per person,” it would be “unjust” to ask India to maintain consumption at its current level.

According to Our World in Data, energy use per person in the United States was 76,634 kilowatt-hours in 2021, which is close to 11 times India’s energy consumption of 6,992 kilowatt-hours per capita.

Climate Change Agenda

Last year, Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, claimed that climate change is based on false narratives.

In an email obtained by The Epoch Times, Moore, who left the organization back in 1986, said that Greenpeace was “hijacked” by the political left when they became aware of the money and power involved in the environment movement.

“The ‘environmental’ movement has become more of a political movement than an environmental movement,” Moore stated. “They are primarily focused on creating narratives, stories, that are designed to instill fear and guilt into the public so the public will send them money.”

In June last year, the independent foundation Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) received signatures from over 1,100 scientists and professionals worldwide for its World Climate Declaration (WCD) stating that there is no climate emergency.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Marcel Crok, the founder of CLINTEL, said that even if it is accepted that carbon dioxide is the main driver of current climate change, there still is no “climate emergency”

“We simply state that all evidence so far indicates that the increase in CO2 and the increase in temperature [are] not harmful for us or for nature and therefore the climate hysteria surrounding the topic is totally unjustified [and] that the ‘cure’—getting rid of fossil fuels asap and replacing them with renewables—probably will be worse than the ‘disease’ [climate change].”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Chinese transplant doctors at Shanghai’s Renji Hospital recently published their first-of-its-kind research in an American academic journal, marking the first kidney pair transplant from preterm infants to adult recipients in a country facing allegations of human rights atrocities in its organ transplantation network.

The state-funded Shanghai Jiao Tong University published a press release on Feb. 27, touting that research from its affiliated hospital Renji Hospital had been published in the authoritative journal for organ transplantation American Journal of Transplantation.

The press release boasted that Renji Hospital and the Shanghai Children’s Medical Center have been “constantly breaking through the limits of young and low body weight kidney transplant donors,” and that it has to date performed 22 “successful” neonate kidney transplants.

It recognized a current lack of expert opinions and consensus guidelines in the global transplant community about the minimum acceptable age and weight of donors. But it concluded that because of this, “the clinical experience of using very low birth weight premature infants or neonatal kidney donors is extremely valuable and will help to accumulate clinical knowledge, build consensus in the industry, and benefit more uremia patients.”

Doctors at Renji Hospital published in January of two “successful” en bloc kidney transplantations (EBKT)—both kidneys—from preterm infants weighing less than 1.2 kilograms (2.6 pounds) to adult recipients with end-stage renal failure.

The medical paper said that both the infants were delivered early by cesarean section due to fetal distress. However, it was determined that they would not survive. The parents of one child agreed to the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy (WLST) and kidney organ donation after circulatory death (DCD) on the baby’s second day of life, and the other parents agreed to withdraw life support on the fourth day of life.

One baby was pronounced dead 15 minutes after withdrawing life support measures, which included a 5 minute window after its mechanical heartbeat failed to be detected. The other baby was pronounced dead by doctors 25 minutes after the withdrawal of life support measures.

Both of the babies’ small 3 centimeter-long kidneys were then removed to be transplanted to the adult recipients. Kidneys only remain viable for transplant for 24-48 hours after death.

Technical Bottlenecks and Ethical Concerns

In Western countries, recipients of neonatal kidney transplants are usually other infants, said Zain Khalpey, associate professor of Surgery, Medical Imaging, Physiological Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona.

However, one recipient of this procedure in China was 34 years old, according to the paper. The other was 25 years old.

“It is untested, unethical. If it’s going into another child, sure. If it’s going into an adult, I’m questioning it,” Khalpey told The Epoch Times on March 4.

The first kidney transplant in human history occurred in 1954. It was done by Dr. Joseph Murray of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, where Khalpey was trained in cardiac surgery.

In 1963, Dr. Murray performed the first neonatal transplant. A baby received a kidney transplant from its identical twin but died of an infection after two and a half years.

“Since then, neonatal kidney transplant has become a routine procedure for infants and babies with kidney failure. And the success rate of neonatal kidney transplants is high, with one-year graft survivals of over 90 percent reported in some studies.

“However, the use of neonatal kidneys for adult transplant is rare” in the West due to technical and ethical issues, Khalpey said.

He pointed out that one technical challenge is potential clinical mismatches between donor and recipient, saying, “neonatal kidneys are smaller than the adults, and the size mismatch can lead to complications such as thrombosis or stenosis and kidney vein blockages.

“In addition, the neonatal kidneys are less developed than the adult kidneys, which can lead to differences in function and then [the patient could] be susceptible to injury.”

Another difficulty is that infants that become organ donors can be born with congenital abnormalities.

“Congenital abnormalities are common in neonates, and some of these abnormalities can affect the function of the donated kidney. So, for example, a donated kidney with a congenital abnormality may be more prone to infection or may have a reduced filtering capacity. So using the kidneys for adult transplantation may therefore lead to higher risks of complications.”

In addition, there are ethical issues associated with the transplantation of organs from infants to adults, according to Khalpey.

“I mean, the neonates are vulnerable. And the use of their organs for transplant raises concerns about coercion and the appropriate use of medical resources. And you know, in some cases, parents may feel pressured to donate their infant’s organs, particularly if they’re told that the donation will save the life of an adult,” he added.

“And the pressure may be exacerbated if patients are from disadvantaged backgrounds or lack access to health care. You know the use of neonatal kidneys for adult transplants therefore disproportionately affects certain populations, raising concerns about equity and justice.”

Another major ethical issue, Khalpey said, would be “the commercialization of neonatal kidney transplants. The use of neonatal kidneys for adult transplant may be seen as a way to increase the supply of organs for transplant in countries with long wait lists for a transplant, and this may lead to the commodification of neonatal organs and exploitation.

Khalpey said it was odd that a needy infant recipient was not present in the Chinese study.

“So it seems extremely odd that this was done. And it seems ‘manufactured,’” Khalpey said, referring to a pre-designed transplantation.

Despite these concerns, Shanghai’s Renji Hospital is touting the potential to use newborn donors as sources of organs for transplants to adults.

In Khalpey’s analysis, he said the researchers may be motivated by a perceived “advantage” of infant organs.

If an infant’s kidney is transplanted, it may last a very long time in the recipient because newborn kidneys have few antibodies that can attack the recipient tissues and cause organ rejection, “which is why the attraction of [Renji Hospital] doing it when they’re neonates,” he said.

The first authors of the above neonatal transplant finding are Li Dawei and Wu Haoyu, attending physicians in the Department of Urology at Renji Hospital. The co-authors are Zhang Ming, deputy director of the Department of Urology at the same hospital, and Bei Fei, director of the Department of Neonatology at Shanghai Children’s Medical Center.

CCP Accused of Organ Harvesting Crimes

But Khalpey remains of the view that the American Journal of Transplantation should not have accepted the Shanghai Renji Hospital article as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been accused of violating international transplant industry regulations.

He believes the magazine’s editors need to show they have asked the authors several questions to ensure ethical conduct: Did the baby’s parents give their consent for the procedure free of coercion? Were the parents prisoners of conscience or members of a vulnerable group in China?

In April 2022, the same journal published a “computational text analysis to conduct a forensic review of 2,838 papers drawn from a dataset of 124,770 Chinese-language transplant publications,” citing ethical concerns in the studies.

“Our algorithm searched for evidence of problematic declarations of brain death during organ procurement,” the paper said. “We find evidence in 71 of these reports, spread nationwide, that brain death could not have properly been declared.”

According to the U.S. Congress’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, “the analysis … supports the inference that transplant surgeons in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) removed organs, including hearts and lungs, in violation of the internationally-accepted ‘dead donor’ rule, i.e., before donors have been (or could be) declared ‘brain dead.’”

The CCP has also been widely accused of forced organ harvesting crimes.

Since 2015, Chinese Communist authorities have claimed that organs in China are obtained only from voluntary donors, but the integrity of this claim is questionable. Data shows that Chinese hospitals are performing several times more transplants than the highest estimates of organ donors could support.

In March 2020, an independent court issued its final verdict on the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience by the CCP. On June 14, 2021, 12 United Nations officers said they were “extremely alarmed” by reports of organ harvesting of Falun Gong adherents, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other ethnic minorities and Christians detained in China.

They called on the Chinese communist government to “allow independent monitoring by international human rights mechanisms.”

This article has been updated for clarity.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Teachers and LGBT activists react, saying the book ‘bans’ signal larger ‘fascist’ push

At Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press conference in Tampa on March 8, a staffer came out twice before it started: once to give the audience a heads-up that an upcoming video might be so offensive some might want to step out.

She returned saying it was about to start and any children present needed to leave. A little boy ran for the door.

The video was sexually graphic enough that The Epoch Times can’t describe much of what was in it.

That spells out the problem DeSantis sought to highlight: the images were those from children’s books dealing with sexuality, homosexuality, and transgenderism, books found in numerous public elementary and middle schools, mostly in Florida’s larger counties like Hillsborough, where Tampa sits.

DeSantis arranged the conference to dispel what he called “myths” promulgated by national news organizations like CBS.

The video included footage featuring Andrea Mitchell of CBS News, Joy Reid of MSNBC, and Whoopi Goldberg on ABC’s “The View.”

The controversies revolve around whether and how public schools teach sexuality and America’s legacy of slavery and discrimination.

One myth DeSantis sought to dispel is that Florida schools have been directed to empty libraries and cover classroom books. 

Another is that Florida has sought to ban children’s books about baseball stars Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente because the books discuss the racism each faced.

A third is that Florida banned instruction on African-American history, including discussing slavery and its aftermath.

“A lot of what’s been going on is an attempt to create a political narrative,” DeSantis said. “And it’s a false political narrative.”

Protesters upset about DeSantis’s push to remove overtly sexual books from school classrooms and libraries gathered for a rally on March 13 outside the state Capitol building in Tallahassee.

They’d come also to lobby lawmakers about an effort to expand the Parental Rights in Education law, signed by DeSantis in March 2022.

Among other things, the law prohibits lessons about sexual topics with children in 3rd grade or younger. It also bans schools from keeping secrets from parents, such as counseling meetings with a child having questions about sexual orientation or gender identity.

And many were upset about proposed legislation to stop medical treatments and surgeries for minors pursuing efforts to live as another gender.

Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida, the group that organized the rally, decried the state’s “hostile takeovers of higher education and more assaults on bodily autonomy.”

“Now, if that doesn’t sound like freedom to you, that’s because it’s not freedom. Free states don’t ban books,” Wolf said.

“Free states don’t criminalize health care. Free states don’t throw parents in jail for caring for their children.

“Free states don’t censor the bits of history that made those in power uncomfortable. There is no freedom in a government dictating what people can read or who they can be.”

“We are here to stand up, to push back, and to fight for real freedom in the state of Florida because real freedom is worth fighting for.”

At his press conference, DeSantis said he sought to set the record straight.

Did Florida Empty Classroom Bookshelves?

It did not, DeSantis said.

A Duval County teacher posted a video showing empty bookshelves and was later fired.

Most books removed came from media centers, not classrooms, and the most titles pulled in any district were 19 each in Duval and St. Johns counties, “not even close to a whole classroom library,” he said.

Titles pulled after parents complained included “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe; “Flamer” by Mike Curato; “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson and David Levithan; and “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships and Being A Human” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan.

All four graphically depict or discuss sex acts of various sorts. Some give detailed instructions.

Florida has long prohibited adults from showing children pornography, DeSantis said.

“Some of the stuff you saw up there is pornographic. Why would we have that in a media center with 10-year-old students?”

As he is prone to do, DeSantis reminded the audience that he and his wife Casey have small children.

“We have a 6, a 4, and a 2-year-old at home. I just think parents—when they’re sending their kids to school—they should not have to worry about this garbage being in the schools.”

“They should just know that you’re going to get a good education.”

State Education Commissioner Manny Diaz joined DeSantis at the podium.

“One of these stories, as the governor mentioned, is the Roberto Clemente book, which is a 40-page picture book about baseball and the life of Roberto Clemente, really an American hero,” Diaz said.

“Not only on the field but for his endeavors in his humanitarian missions.”

“So I wrote a letter to the superintendent and said, ‘What are you doing with this book with Roberto Clemente? This book needs to be put back on the shelves. It’s necessary for our students.’

“And magically the next morning they said that this book was approved, the Hank Aaron book was approved.

“So you see that all they’re doing is trying to use this to create lies and attack our governor. What is true, however, is that pornography is absolutely prohibited from our school libraries.”

“The Department of Education has never instructed any district or school to empty or cover bookshelves,” Diaz said, adding the state doesn’t ban books.

One false news report said the state had banned the famous novel “To Kill A Mockingbird,” “only to find out from our response that it’s actually on the recommended list of reading for our students in Florida,” Diaz said.

DeSantis said Diaz’s department contacted Duval County and “said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, you have a beef with Hank Aaron or Roberto Clemente? Where are you getting this? Why can’t we learn about that? Where in our law does it—?’ and of course, they didn’t have an answer.

“And [they] said, ‘No, no, no, we’re not taking Hank Aaron out. We’re not going to take Roberto Clemente out.’

“You know, if our kids only learned about Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, I think they’d probably do okay if you just study their lives,” the former captain of the Yale baseball team said about the two legendary and ground-breaking stars.

“So that’s a hoax.”

Did Florida Ban African-American Studies?

DeSantis said his administration has, in fact, strengthened the curriculum requiring the teaching of African-American history and slavery.

Among other things, they added the 1920 Ocoee Election Day Riot to the events school must teach, he said.

In the riot, a white mob killed 30 to 35 black people and burned most black-owned buildings and homes in northern Ocoee, a town near Orlando.

According to online accounts, those on the south side were later killed or driven out by threats of violence.

According to the governor’s office, the state also requires coverage of the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery; the passage to America; the enslavement experience; abolition; and the history and contributions to American society of the African diaspora.

The state rejected an Advanced Placement African-American History curriculum offered by the College Board, which sponsors AP courses and runs the college-admission SAT exams.

Florida opposed it for its alleged ideological indoctrination, DeSantis said. One unit was on Black Queer Studies. He read a quote from the proposed syllabus:

“Quote—’We have to encourage and develop practices whereby queerness isn’t surrendered to the status quo of race, class, gender, and sexuality. It means building forms of queerness that reject the given realities of the government and the market.’

“And I’m just thinking to myself, you know, why aren’t we talking about Frederick Douglass? Why aren’t we talking about things that I think really matter?”

“A lot of this was informed by, I would say, Neo-Marxism, a heavy, heavy ideological bent. And so that clearly is not something that we’re going to do.”

DeSantis talked about his Stop WOKE Act, which pushes back against the use of radical approaches like critical race theory in public school curriculums.

Among its provisions is requiring the teaching of inspirational stories regarding Floridians, particularly African-Americans, “and I think that’s a better way to lift people up, to showcase people who have defied the odds and made great contributions.

“Don’t tell somebody, ‘You’re oppressed, and you have no chance in life.’ Why would you work hard if you don’t?”

“It’s a positive view. It’s showing that people have been able to break down barriers and do great things. And I think that is the way we need to be doing it, rather than always trying to say that the country is bad.”

The Stop WOKE Act prohibits teaching children they are inherently racist based on their race, color, or national origin, DeSantis said.

“Does anyone think that babies are born racist? I don’t think so. I think they’re told either to respect people or not.”

The Act also bans teaching that concepts like hard work and merit are racist, he said. “In reality, we believe merit and hard work are important so that people are able to pursue happiness.”

“You have somebody in a classroom. Now go back 200 years. Someone may look like them. They are not responsible—some first grader sitting in the classroom—for that.”

The act bans instruction on collective guilt for acts committed in the past.

“It’s wrong to identify somebody who’s just a young kid going to school and saying they’re guilty of things that they had nothing to do with.”

Also joining DeSantis at the podium were concerned parents and school board members.

Transparency in Schools

“CRT does not belong in the schools,” said Tia Bess, an African-American farmer with three children in northeast Florida.

She talked about being called “a token person, which is a racial slur,” because she started questioning the Duval County School Board on that and other subjects, such as strict COVID-19 masking policies for schoolchildren.

“I was labeled, not just a troublemaker, but someone who was considered an Uncle Tom. This is my country. My father fought in Korea and he didn’t fight for this type of America.”

“I speak of this as a woman of color because we’re taught that if you look like me, you have to vote Democrat. We’re taught that in schools.

“We’re taught that Republicans only care about the rich. Republicans are only white and well-off. That’s incorrect. That’s misinformation.”

In a humorous aside to DeSantis, she said she hadn’t voted for him in his first run for governor because she was previously a lifelong Democrat.

Now, she said, “we need more people in office just like Governor DeSantis that supports parental rights, that supports transparency in education.”

Mother’s Concern Over Topics

Julie Gebhards, a mother of six, said she’s a regular speaker at Hillsborough County School Board meetings. She appreciated, “the opportunity to speak in a setting where I don’t believe my mic will be turned off.”

She said her concerns over books used in the schools began three years ago when her 15-year-old daughter asked her to buy a book for the daughter’s English class.

“No one could have prepared me for the review I found online,” which said the book contained graphic detail about prostitution, incest, rape, pornography, nudity, and worse, Gebhards said.

As she dug into the school district’s literary offerings, she kept finding worse and worse books, some of which she described in her speech.

The district has 400 copies of books by one author, “all with the same themes, glamorizing drugs, sex, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.”

She found one depicting a satanic orgy, she said.

Gebhards said that local school authorities, including a committee formed to review some of the books, refused to remove them.

“It is simply a lie to say these books are being banned,” she said. “Like every school in America is banning Playboy, right? Let’s hope so. This is about discretion. Schools should not be able to approve harmful literature.”

Beyond Books

At the LGBT rally on March 13, state Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, used incendiary language to say the problematic issues extend beyond books.

She said the state had been “so close” to real gender equality.

Then suddenly, she said, “being fascist was cool.” She accused DeSantis of wanting to “commit genocide on trans people,” by backing efforts to end “gender-affirming care” for minors in the state.

Jon, 30, came to be part of the rally from the Miami area. He can relate to discussions about how including books on sexual orientation and gender identity can be important resources for youngsters.

“I grew up confused and alone,” he told The Epoch Times.

He and his partner, who have already married legally, have planned a wedding celebration in August. They fear the Supreme Court will overturn the Obergefell decision that legalized gay marriage nationally, he said.

If that happens, they fear Florida will revert to banning unions like theirs.

They met as freshmen at Tallahassee’s Florida State University and have been together nine years, “longer than gay marriage has been legal in Florida,” he said.

Jon said opposition to LGBT issues is sometimes seen as a “faith” issue. But he grew up in the Chabad community, a Jewish movement that is Orthodox and Chasidic. He’s less Orthodox himself nowadays, he said.

“At the time it was sort of don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said. “But when I came out [as gay], it wasn’t like I had to go.”

Chabad was accepting of him, he said.

“I feel very blessed as a gay Jewish person. My faith is very pro-LGBT.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

SCIENCE FICTION BECOMES DYSTOPIAN FACT.

Scientists from Osaka University, Japan have discovered a way to use artificial intelligence (AI) to read our minds – quite literally.

By combining magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with AI technology, the researchers were able to recreate visual images directly from human brain activity. What’s more, by using widely available Stable Diffusion technology, they were able to do so at a very low cost and with relatively little effort compared to other recent attempts to do this. The researchers’ findings are reported in a pre-print study.

Although researchers had already found ways to convert neural imaging into visual representations, complex and expensive deep-learning technology has generally been required. Technology which must be “trained” and carefully calibrated. Still, the representations produced are often sketchy, with poor fidelity.

The new method used by the Japanese researchers harnesses popular technology which has found widespread use in the generation of images using linguistic prompts. Over the last few months, social media platforms have been awash with images created using Stable Diffusion and other platforms like it. The technology is able to produce compelling, sometimes hyperrealistic images, with just a few carefully selected words. The technology can be used to produce static images or, with some tweaking, animations in popular styles such as anime.

While some in the art world have been supportive of this, many artists are fearful that it will replace them – and soon. Some have begun lobbying for this technology to be limited or even banned.

In September last year, the New York Times covered the fallout from that year’s Colorado State Art Fair competition, which was won by an entry – Théâtre D’opéra Spatial – created using Midjourney, another popular AI system.

“Art is dead, dude,” the winner, Jason M. Allen, told the Times.

AI: NOW READING MINDS.

To produce their images, the Japanese researchers followed a two-stage process. First, they decoded a visual image from the MRI signals of their test subjects. Then they used the MRI signals to “decode latent text representations” which could be fed into the Stable Diffusion platform, like prompts, to enhance the quality of the initial visual images retrieved.

The results of this process can be seen in the series of images below.

A paper published in Nature last year used a very similar approach, albeit with more specialised diffusion technology, to reconstruct AI-generated faces from MRI data.

Although the reconstructions produced in the Nature study are clearly more faithful to the original representations, what is so remarkable about the new Japanese research is the fact that it was done using a platform that is already used by millions of people around the world to create images.

Stable Diffusion is a learning system – a so-called neural network – that trains itself using huge amounts of image data scraped directly from the vast repository of images on the internet.

Its creator, Emad Mostaque, has described it as a “generative search engine”. Unlike Google, which shows you images that already exist, Stable Diffusion can show you things that don’t.

“This is a Star Trek Holodeck moment,” according to Mostaque.

WHAT NEXT?

The disruptive power of AI has been on very prominent display over the last year. As a magazine editor, I for one can see the amazing potential for platforms like Stable Diffusion to provide high quality art at next-to-no cost or effort. If I want a picture of President Biden’s legendary showdown with Corn Pop, perhaps in the style of a 1980s action film, I simply have to ask and an AI platform like Midjourney will deliver. What’s not to like?

At the same time, it’s clear such technology has very real downsides. As noted, artists are sweating about losing commissions to AI.

Alongside AI-generated art, we’ve also heard a lot recently about Chat GPT-3, a technology which can write complicated essays, from scratch, in a matter of seconds, again with a simple prompt. The technology is already being used by university students to write high-quality essays that can fool their assessors. The entire university assessment system may have to be rethought.

You don’t have to be a fan of the Terminator or Matrix franchises, though, to see that the worrying potential uses of AI extend well beyond cheating university assessments or forcing mediocre artists out of business.

The website Popular Mechnanics recently reported, for instance, that US Air Force drones can now recognise individual people’s faces from high in the air, using AI. The firm that has created the technology, Seattle-based RealNetworks, says the drones can use the technology to distinguish friend from foe, and that the software can be applied for rescue missions, patrolling and “domestic search operations”.  An Israeli firm is working on similar technology that will help drones find the perfect angle for facial recognition.

How long until we see drones equipped with AI making decisions that lead to human harm, even death? Will AI drones be allowed to make life-or-death decisions without human intervention at all? Will they be used in domestic policing and surveillance – in what roles, and with what powers? These are classic questions that have been posed by futurists, science-fiction writers and ethicists, but it’s now increasingly clear that they are not hypotheticals or thought experiments – we’re talking when, not if, and probably much sooner than you’d like to think.

In Dubai, drones are already being used in domestic policing to identify poor drivers. In the US police are using drones for a wide variety of purposes, from aiding in search and rescue and training officers, to collecting information on suspects and monitoring public events. Local authorities and rights groups are already pushing back against the use of facial-recognition technology. In 2021, Portland City Council adopted one of the strictest bans on the technology in the US, which might perhaps have had something to do with the city being an epicenter of disorder during the summer of “mostly peaceful” riots and beyond. The New York Civil Liberties Union published a report, also in 2021, warning of the widespread use of drones for surveillance in New York City and State.

The malign possibilities of AI-mind-reading technology far outstrip those of drones equipped with facial recognition software. We’re not talking about potential infringements of our social privacy – where we go and what we do – but penetration of our very minds – the MKUltra mad scientist’s wet dream. In fact, at this stage it’s hard to see what applications the technology could really have other than to sharpen the blunter techniques of sensory deprivation, isolation and scopolamine in getting people to divulge their innermost secrets.

However clumsy the tech may seem now, the captivating leaps we’ve seen in the past year with technologies like GPT-3 and Stable Diffusion should leave us in no doubt about the direction this is headed. The technology will become more powerful, more accurate, more practical, and that’s a guarantee.

Pretty soon we’re going to find out that our wildest dreams, and also our worst nightmares, could be more real than we would ever have dared to think. What’s even more terrifying is that others may be able to see them too, whether we want them to or not.

I don’t have to tell you that crime is getting worse in Democrat-run cities. Whether they are in the South, North, or West Coast, cities run by liberals are in massive decline. Everything from shoplifting to homicides is skyrocketing. Democrat leaders either ignore it or blame gun ownership. But it is their own policies that have caused the chaos.

How bad is it getting in big cities? Well, you probably know that tens of thousands of Americans have fled the big coastal cities for red states. But it’s not just citizens who are fleeing. Once-thriving downtowns are collapsing at a record pace. Walmart just closed every store in one liberal city. And now, Amazon is following them.

From Breitbart:

Internet retail giant Amazon is closing eight of its Amazon Go convenience stores in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City, amid wider cuts in the tech giant’s brick-and-mortar stores. Several of the stores are located in Seattle’s troubled downtown district where crime and open-air drug use are crowding out big business.

Uh-oh. Amazon, the biggest retailer in the world, is closing eight of its brick-and-mortar “Amazon Go” shops. These stores just happen to be in blue cities with shocking levels of rising crime. The cities are San Francisco (which does prosecute shoplifting anymore), Seattle (which is ignoring an exploding drug and homeless crisis), and New York (which, of course, has eliminated cash bail).

Some in the media are saying this is due to overall economic decline. But you can’t blame Joe Biden for this one. Amazon just bragged about opening a new store in Puyallup, Washington. That, I don’t have to tell you, is not a major city.

What is really going on is Amazon is closing stores in major cities overrun with crime. They hoped these stores would bring in truckloads of revenue. Instead, the company had to face endless shoplifting and vandalism. They probably saw a drop in customers, as residents began avoiding these areas.

But, sad as this sounds, Amazon will survive. The massive corporation continues to thrive thanks to online sales. But what about all those mom-and-pop stores that have been forced to close? Many stores in downtown areas were owned by small business owners. They have also been forced to close their doors. These are not massive corporations. These are families, driven out of business thanks to the left’s love for crime.

Key Takeaways:

• Amazon is closing 8 of its retail stores, in crime-filled blue cities.
• Democrat-run cities have seen skyrocketing crime, thanks to liberal policies.
• Several big chains have closed stores recently, including Walmart and Starbucks.

Source: Breitbart

erbal fireworks erupted during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, as Democrats repeatedly attacked the two Twitter files witnesses and tried to make them reveal their sources.

Democrat journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger appeared before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to talk about Twitter’s collusion with the federal government to censor speech. Taibbi and Shellenberger, along with reporters Bari Weiss and Alex Berenson, were given access to Twitter’s internal communications late last year, resulting in a series of blockbuster reports about the government’s efforts to influence content moderation on social media.

“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA,” Taibbi testified.

While he said the government’s actions posed a “grave threat to people of all political persuasions,” Taibbi estimated that suppression of conservative speech outnumbered suppression of liberal speech by a factor of “20 to one.”

The former Rolling Stone reporter slammed social and corporate media outlets for going along with the federal government’s efforts to create “a form of digital McCarthyism” in the 21st century.

In his opening statement, Shellenberger described the coordination between social media, corporate media, and the federal government as a terrifying  “Censorship-Industrial Complex” of the sort “seen in totalitarian societies.”

Michael Shellenberger testimony on the #TwitterFiles: “We now know that DHS is building out a Censorship Industrial Complex….” pic.twitter.com/a2MwrY8kqP

— SOMETHiNG WiCKED (@som3thingwicked) March 9, 2023

about:blankReport Ad

In her opening remarks, the ranking Democrat on the Committee, Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), derided Taibbi and Shellenberger as “so-called journalists and as “Elon Musk’s public scribes.” She also accused them of releasing “cherrypicked” and “out-of-context” emails designed to promote the “chosen narrative” of Musk and Republicans.

Plaskett said Taibbi and Shellenberger posed a “direct threat” to the people who oppose them.

Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) strongly objected to her comments and demanded that her words be struck from the record.

Taibbi addressed her insult by citing his decades of experience in the field of journalism, as well as his numerous journalism awards.

Taibbi fires back: “I’m not a so-called journalist. I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I’ve written 10 books.” pic.twitter.com/8KrBqg5S4i

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 9, 2023

“Who gave you access to these emails? Who is the individual who gave you permission to access the emails?” Plaskett later asked Taibbi.

“Well, the attribution for my story is sources at Twitter and that’s what I’m going to refer to,” Taibbi responded.

“Did Mr. Musk contact you, Mr. Taibbi?” the congresswoman insisted.

“Again, the attribution for my story is sources at Twitter,” Taibbi replied.

Plaskett went on to ask Shellenberger the same question. He told the congresswoman that he was invited to the project by his colleague Weiss.

When Rep. Jordan chastised Plaskett for trying to pressure the journalists to reveal their sources, the Democrat denied that she had done that.

“I think this is interesting. First the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is asking for your backgrounds, and now the ranking member on the Committee on the Weaponization of government is asking for your sources!” he exclaimed.

“I never asked them for their sources!” Plaskett interjected defensively.

WATCH @StaceyPlaskett just falsely claimed she did not ask @mtaibbi to reveal his sources for the #TwitterFiles

She did.

ROLL THE TAPE. pic.twitter.com/JUVSuD0n61

— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) March 9, 2023

Later on, Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX)  tried to get Taibbi to reveal his sources.

“When was the first time that Mr. Musk approached you about writing for the files?” Garcia asked the journalist.

Again, Taibbi said he couldn’t answer the question without giving away his source. Garcia countered that the “only logical conclusion” was that Musk was a source. Taibbi shot back that she was “free to conclude” whatever she wants.

Democrats now want journalists to:

1. Expose their sources publicly
2. Expose their conditions for publication

Have we ever seen such an attack on the First Amendment in a congressional hearing? pic.twitter.com/bWdzHvJ4KJ

— Weaponization Committee (@Weaponization) March 9, 2023

Garcia went on to ask Shellenberger if he was in a “threesome” with Weiss and Musk, prompting Shellenberger to burst out laughing. The congresswoman also appeared to be unfamiliar with online platform Substack, calling it “kind of like a web page.”

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D) has unintentionally provided amazing comedic relief during the #TwitterFiles Hearing:

First she pondered that Substack was “kind of like a web page” and then she asked @ShellenbergerMD if he @bariweiss and @elonmusk were “in this as a threesome?”  pic.twitter.com/JfWznZKOsR

— Gain of Fauci (@DschlopesIsBack) March 9, 2023

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) used her five minutes to suggest Taibbi and Shellenberger were involved in the Twitter Files for fame and fortune.

“It’s quite obvious that you’ve profited from the Twitter Files,” Wasserman-Shultz told Taibbi. She asked him if he has indeed profited from this reporting.

Taibbi said it was probably “a wash” since he has had to hire a team of journalists to work with him with his own money.

Schultz went on to assert that the fact Taibbi had been called as a Republican witness “casts a cloud” over his objectivity. She described him as “Elon Musk’s handpicked journalist” before adding, “pardon the oxymoron.”

Concerned about the Democrat attacks on the witnesses, Jordan asked Taibbi about recent revelations that the FTC’s demanded that Twitter Inc. “identify all journalists” granted access to company records.

“Do you find that scary Mr. Taibbi that you got a federal government agency asking a private company who in the press were you speaking to?” Jordan inquired.

The reporter said he did find it scary because “it’s none of the government’s business which journalists a private company talks to and why,” before adding “I think every journalist should be concerned about that.”

Taibbi lamented that there is no longer an “esprit de corps” among journalists where they all look out for each other.

“That is gone now,” he said. “We don’t protect one another.”

pic.twitter.com/zz62Dvr7BB

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 9, 2023

Taibbi dropped a new Twitter File thread Thursday morning, ahead of the hearing, showing how the CDC called for the censorship of truthful information that was deemed inconvenient to the government narrative, also known as “malinformation.”

In the name of fighting  “vaccine hesitancy,” the CDC called for censorship of true stories, such as accurate posts about vaccine injuries, or factual posts about foreign countries banning the COVID jabs, according to the report.

1. TWITTER FILES:
Statement to Congress
THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX pic.twitter.com/JLryjnINXS

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023

Rep. Massie (R-Ky.), who was censored on Twitter himself, spoke on the CDC’s efforts to throttle truthful information about the pandemic.

.@RepThomasMassie: “I want to talk about the weaponization of CDC against the American people” pic.twitter.com/wn3brBojui

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 9, 2023

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.), who has the ludicrous habit of bringing up either the Russia, Ukraine and/or Jan. 6 fake government narratives at every hearing no matter how unrelated to the subject matter, told the witnesses that they could not “find any actual evidence of government censorship of lawful speech.”

Jordan countered by citing an actual instance of the government specifically requesting the removal of a tweet by Children’s Health Defense founder Robert Kennedy Jr.

Rep. Daniel Goldman (who bought a congressional seat) says “you cannot find actual evidence of any direct government censorship of lawful speech.”

Rep. @Jim_Jordan then pulls out an email from the White House to Twitter asking them to censor a tweet from @RobertKennedyJr. pic.twitter.com/HEsr3rQC5E

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 9, 2023

The email in question came from Clarke Humphrey, the Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team at the White House, who asked someone at Twitter to censor RFK Jr.  Humphrey said her team was “wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP” and to “keep an eye out” for more.

In the offending Tweet, Kennedy had simply drawn attention “to a wave of suspicious deaths among the elderly” following administration of the COVID shots, noting that Hank Aaron’s demise followed that pattern.

#HankAaron‘s tragic death is part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration of #COVID #vaccines. He received the #Moderna vaccine on Jan. 5 to inspire other Black Americans to get the vaccine. #TheDefenderhttps://t.co/vbuHt22bJz

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 22, 2021

Another email revealed that the Biden White House directed Facebook to censor Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren.

Rob Flaherty, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy in the Executive Office of the President, targeted  Carlson because he had tweeted that the jabs didn’t work, and Lahren, simply because she had stated that she wasn’t getting the vax. Senior Pandemic Advisor to Biden, Andy Slavitt, was also copied on the email.

Missouri’s new attorney general, Republican Andrew Bailey, released the emails back in January.

The entire hearing can be viewed below:

SOURCE: American Greatness

This is an unveiled threat to our nation’s children in pre-school, so now there is no safe place for our kids. It is certain that religious “child care” will be excluded, and that a doctrine will be pushed on our kids to hate our country and the white settlers that made it such a great nation. [US Patriot]

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Joe Biden will travel to the swing-state of Pennsylvania on Thursday to unveil a federal budget plan laden with spending proposals and higher taxes on the wealthy that will form a blueprint for his expected 2024 re-election bid.

Biden’s proposal, which resurrects many items stripped from last year’s budget plan, faces even stiffer opposition in Congress this year, after Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.

It comes in direct defiance of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s threat to block an increase in the $31.4 trillion limit on federal borrowing unless Biden agrees to rein in federal spending.

Speaking at a Philadelphia union hall, the democrat will highlight plans to cut the nation’s deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years by raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and ending corporate tax breaks enacted in 2017 under then President Donald Trump.

A White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, contrasted Biden’s vision with that of Republicans, saying the budget would reduce the U.S. deficit while lowering costs for families.

It also proposes raising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, the official said, and “tackles wasteful special interest giveaways.”

Biden’s budget plan proposes funding higher outlays and closing the deficit by imposing a 25% minimum tax on billionaires and doubling the capital gains tax from 20%, the White House official said. Biden has also said the budget will propose quadrupling a 1% stock buyback tax, while going after corporations and rich individuals who skip paying taxes.

Biden, will promise to protect those earning less than $400,000 a year from tax increases and safeguard Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. At the same time, he will offer relief to working families by investing billions to ease the cost of childcare and ensure free preschool for all of the country’s 4 million 4-year-olds, and promises to increase rail safety.

White House officials say that lowering the cost of childcare will boost the economy and allow more women to return to work. Such proposals also enjoy strong support and could help boost Biden’s low approval ratings as he gears up announce his reelection bid this spring.

Republicans say Biden’s spending during his first two years in office drove inflation to nearly 40-year highs last summer and are already readying $150 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary programs – including about $25 billion from the Department Education and cuts in foreign aid and programs aimed at preventing sexually transmitted diseases – that they say would save $1.5 trillion over a decade.

Is there common ground? “Very little, very little,” Republican Representative Ben Cline told Reuters. “He doesn’t want to cut any spending, he just wants to raise taxes.”

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Trevor Hunnicutt, additional reporting by David Morgan, editing by Robert Birsel)

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Policy change would quash oil and gas production, environmentalists argue

Joe Biden’s 2024 budget would eliminate tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry, a move that environmental groups say would cripple oil and gas production in the United States.

The provision comes as U.S. families recover from months of record-high gas prices under Biden. The average price for a gallon of gas in the United States last summer exceeded $5 for the first time in history, and while that number has since dropped to $3.47, the national gas average was just $2.39 when Biden took office.

Biden responded to those sky-high prices by urging oil and gas companies to increase production. Ending fossil fuel tax breaks, however, would force those companies to do the opposite, environmental groups have long argued. Greenpeace—a left-wing group working to “address the climate crisis” and transform America’s “racist” economy—said in 2021 that the elimination of just one oil and gas tax break “would reduce new oil drilling by 25 percent.” Such a dip in supply would prompt higher gas prices, Biden asserted last year. “If we want lower gas prices, we need to have more oil supply right now,” the Democrat said.

Biden touted his budget in a series of Thursday tweets, calling it a “blue-collar blueprint” that would “make our economy work for the middle class again.” But the oil and gas extraction industry employs nearly 150,000 Americans—jobs that are some of the highest-paid blue-collar positions in the country.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

Biden’s push to eliminate oil and gas tax breaks marks the second time this week alone that the Democrat’s administration has targeted the fossil fuel industry. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed a rule that could force coal plants to close—just months earlier, the White House walked back comments from Biden pledging to shut down coal plants “all across America.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

First lady Jill Biden celebrated International Women’s Day Wednesday by presenting an International Women Of Courage award to a biological male who identifies as a woman.

At the White House’s annual International Women of Courage ceremony, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken awarded 11 “extraordinary women” who are “working to build a brighter future for all,” the State Department said in a press release. Included in that list was Alba Rueda, a transgender biological man and Argentina’s special envoy for sexual orientation and gender identity in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade, and Worship.

The Biden administration joined the numerous other liberal organizations taking pains to include transgender people in March’s Women’s History month. Washington, D.C., Public Libraries announced this month’s theme “honors all women, including trans women, and femme individuals who have made it their life’s work to capture our stories.” Hershey Canada, in a special #HerforShe ad campaign, featured transgender male Fae Johnstone on its candy wrappers.

“It’s International Women’s Day—a good time to remember that Democrats can’t even tell you what a woman is,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R., Ark.) tweeted Wednesday. Last summer, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told the Senate Judiciary Committee she could not actually define a woman.

The White House introduced Rueda as a “transgender woman who was kicked out of classrooms, barred for sitting for exams, refused job opportunities, subjected to violence, and rejected by her family. But in the face of these challenges, she worked to end violence and discrimination against the LGBTQ plus community in Argentina.”

In touting Rueda’s transgender activism, the State Department noted Rueda’s “campaigning” to change the name of the National Women’s Conference to the “Plurinational Conference of Women and Lesbian, Cross-Dresser, Transgender, Bisexual, Intersex, and Non-Binary Persons.”

“Apparently men are a lot better at being women than women are. Step up your game, ladies,” Townhall columnist Derek Hunter joked.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Report authors point to school districts dumbing down curriculum standards

Americans’ average IQ is in decline for the first time in nearly a century, according to a new study, a finding that comes as many schools gut curricula standards to promote so-called equity and inclusion.

Young Americans between the ages of 18 and 22 saw the biggest decline in IQ, according to a new study published in the psychology journal Intelligence and reported on by Campus Reform. The study’s authors suggest that these IQ declines occurring between 2006 and 2018 may be due to poor-quality education.

The findings could indicate “that either the caliber of education has decreased across this study’s sample and/or that there has been a shift in the perceived value of certain cognitive skills,” according to the report.

The study comes as school districts across the country eliminate honors curricula from high schools in the name of racial equity. Culver City School District in Los Angeles caught backlash from parents of honors students who lost opportunities to enroll in accelerated programs.

“It’s not working and we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater,” said one Culver City parent.

Universities have also lowered their standards for admission, with the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University removing their entrance exam requirements.

Plaintiffs in the Asian-discrimination case against Harvard say that biases arising from subjective criteria such as “likability” could be eliminated by emphasizing objective measures such as exam scores.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

FBI director Christopher Wray refused to say Thursday whether the release of information from Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a “disinformation” campaign.

No evidence has emerged to support the claim—initially advanced by Democrats and former intelligence officials—that the release of documents found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to smear President Biden. But when pressed on this question during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, Wray repeatedly dodged, citing an ongoing Justice Department investigation.

“I want to be careful about, there is an ongoing investigation that is relevant to that, so I have to be careful of what I can share on that here.” Wray said.

The question is at the center of a bitter partisan debate over the Biden family’s foreign business dealings. Emails from the laptop reveal details of Biden’s work in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere. Documents from the laptop suggest President Joe Biden had knowledge of his son’s business affairs, contradicting his claims to the contrary.

The owner of a computer repair shop in Delaware has said that Biden dropped off his laptop for repairs in April 2019 but never came back to retrieve it. The shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, has said he provided a copy of the Biden hard drive to the FBI and later to journalists.

In December 2020, Hunter Biden revealed that he was under Justice Department investigation for his taxes. It was later reported that the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware opened an investigation of Biden in 2018 and was probing his foreign business dealings.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Senate on Thursday voted 51-42 to confirm Maria Araújo Kahn, President Joe Biden’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals nominee who suggested that microaggressions can “kill you.”

Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) were the only Republicans to vote yes on Kahn, a justice on the Connecticut State Supreme Court who has conducted numerous diversity trainings on “implicit bias.” For one of those trainings, at Fordham Law School, participants were assigned a video, “How Microaggressions Are Like Mosquito Bites,” that likened verbal slights to deadly viruses.

“Some mosquitoes carry truly threatening diseases that can mess up your life for years,” the video says. “And other mosquitos carry strains that can even kill you.” Kahn also lamented, in a 2020 opinion, that First Amendment law lets bigots get away with “verbally assaulting” oppressed groups.

Kahn is bringing these attitudes to one of the most influential federal courts in the country, which has jurisdiction over New York State and routinely hears high-profile cases about First Amendment issues. In 2019, for example, the Second Circuit ruled that former president Donald Trump could not block users from his personal Twitter account.

Khan is not the only Biden nominee with a track record of outlandish statements. Rebecca Slaughter, whom Biden renominated to the Federal Trade Commission in February, said in 2020 that antitrust law “can and should be antiracist.”

“It isn’t possible to really be actually neutral,” Slaughter told CNBC in an interview, “nor should we be neutral in the face of systemic racism.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

New hire Sarah Miller highlights close relationship between FTC and left-wing advocacy groups that objected to Musk’s Twitter takeover

An antitrust activist who lobbied for federal investigations of Elon Musk is joining the Federal Trade Commission as a special adviser, as the agency ramps up its probe into Twitter’s security practices under Musk.

Sarah Miller, the founder of the American Economic Liberties Project, will serve as special adviser to FTC chair Lina Khan, a Biden appointee whom Republicans have accused of “weaponizing” the agency.

Miller called for the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment to investigate Musk’s purchase of Twitter in October, saying his business ties to China are “concerning.”

The hiring move follows reports that the FTC is seeking to depose Musk and obtain records of the company’s correspondence with journalists, as part of its probe of recent layoffs and data protection policies at Twitter.

Miller’s hiring also highlights the close relationship between the FTC and left-wing advocacy groups, many of which objected to Musk’s Twitter takeover and his promise to lift speech restrictions that the company had used to target conservatives. The news could also add to concerns, raised by House Republicans, that the FTC’s Twitter probe is the “result of partisan pressure to target Twitter and silence Musk.”

An FTC spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon that Miller’s hiring is unrelated to Twitter and she will “take no part whatsoever in the investigation of Twitter’s possible violations of its consent order or any other investigation the FTC conducts.”

“It should surprise absolutely no one that a Biden appointee would hire a former Obama administration Treasury official who shares similar views of the vital role that robust antitrust enforcement plays in protecting consumers and ensuring fair competition in the American economy,” said the spokesperson.

The FTC is examining whether Twitter is complying with requirements to protect user data, after Musk laid off a large portion of its employees. But House Republicans say the probe has turned into a fishing expedition and an “aggressive campaign to harass Twitter and deluge it with demands about its personnel decisions.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), a member of the House select committee that released a report criticizing the FTC investigation this week, said Khan—also a former antitrust activist—has “weaponized” the agency.

“Lina Khan is the most dangerous regulator far too many don’t know about, and her weaponized FTC is obviously assembling an enemies list to suffer the abuse of its power,” Issa told the Washington Free Beacon. “That’s what Elon Musk is finding out, and he won’t be the last. There’s no way our committee can just look away and not deal with this.”

Miller founded the American Economic Liberties Project in 2020 with funding from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who has bankrolled several other organizations leading the anti-Musk pressure campaign.

The AELP lobbied the Biden administration in October to investigate Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his administration of Starlink. Miller said at the time that Musk’s purchase did “not raise antitrust concerns” involving the FTC. But she claimed the acquisition posed security risks that merited other federal investigations.

“Elon Musk’s potential dependencies on the Chinese government are concerning, and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should investigate his takeover of Twitter,” said Miller, in a statement published by AELP. “As should the Federal Communication Commission, considering Musk’s control of Starlink’s satellite internet service.”

The FTC sent Twitter a list of over 350 requests in the three months after Musk bought the company, including demands for any internal correspondence “relating to Elon Musk,” details about the company’s journalist contacts and information on specific personnel decisions, according to the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

In a report on Tuesday, the committee argued that the FTC investigation was driven by a “persistent, fever-pitched pressure campaign by left-wing activists and Democrats.”

One of the leading anti-Musk pressure groups cited in the report is the Open Markets Institute, where Miller previously served as deputy director and Khan served as director of legal policy.

OMI has repeatedly called on federal agencies to take action against Musk. In October, the group urged the FTC to block the Twitter acquisition, saying Musk “poses a number of immediate and direct threats to American democracy, free speech, and national security.” Omidyar’s foundation has donated at least $100,000 to the OMI, according to its website.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Tester says he hates eating out because Montanans ‘like our own meat’

Montana senator Jon Tester bills himself as “a tireless defender of rural America” who prefers a home-cooked meal to dining out in Washington, D.C.’s vibrant restaurant scene. But the Democrat’s campaign receipts tell a different story: Tester has spent more than a million dollars at swanky restaurants, including one Beltway haunt that touts its appeal to “senators, congressmen, celebrities, and powerbrokers.”

Tester’s campaign and leadership PAC have dropped at least $1.2 million at restaurants and on catered events since 2006, including more than $270,000 at restaurants since 2019, according to campaign finance records. That includes $31,000 at Morton’s Steakhouse, a Washington mainstay where eight-ounce steaks run $53 and margaritas cost $35 a pop. Then there’s Del Frisco’s, a steakhouse that enforces a “strict upscale dress code” on its patrons, and RPM Italian, owned by celebrity reporter Giuliana Rancic and visited in recent years by rapper Drake and comedian Pete Davidson. Tester’s campaign spent $8,100 and $6,000 at the restaurants, respectively.

Another Tester campaign favorite is Bistro Cacao, where the Democrat has shelled out $15,745 for a taste of “French indulgence with contemporary flair.” Tester spent an additional $9,900 at Bistro Bis, a French restaurant on Capitol Hill that boasts “ambiance and luxury” for its clientele of “senators, congressmen, celebrities, and powerbrokers.”

The spending flies in the face of the senator’s public remarks about fine dining. Tester has insisted he would rather eat at home, preferably with meat transported from his Montana farm, than go out for dinner. “At the end of the long day, I am happier not going out [to eat],” he told the New York Times in 2012. “Taking meat with us is just something that we do. We like our own meat.”

Tester did not respond to a request for comment.

The senator’s flair for luxury dining could hurt his image as a humble Montana farmer, which he is likely to lean on in his 2024 campaign. Tester, whose campaign site is plastered with images of him working at his farm outside Big Sandy, Mont., is considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats on the 2024 Senate slate. A Tester loss would dramatically hinder Democrats’ efforts to maintain a majority in the upper chamber.

Tester, who recently railed against “multimillionaires” though he himself is worth up to $6.7 million, has been in the U.S. Senate since 2007. It is unclear which Republicans will run against the 66-year-old Tester, though Reps. Ryan Zinke and Matt Rosendale are rumored to be eyeing a run for the seat.

Tester did not spend any money at Ted’s Montana Grill, a Montana-themed steakhouse with three locations in the D.C. metro area.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Rubio, Wicker say Colin Kahl sought to shift attention to Trump

Pentagon official Colin Kahl leaked classified information about the Chinese spy balloon to deflect blame about the Biden administration’s mishandling of the situation, according to two Republican senators.

Kahl, whom Joe Biden appointed his under secretary of defense for policy, provided reporters with classified information—disclosing that CCP spy balloons may have infiltrated the United States during the Trump administration—Sens. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) allege. This is the first time that Kahl has been named as the source of these leaks, which were provided to reporters and appeared in news stories at CNN, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post, in an apparent attempt to shift blame away from Biden after the administration allowed the Chinese spy balloon to traverse the entire United States before shooting it down. While doing so, he omitted the fact that the prior Chinese balloons were only discovered much later and the Trump administration did not have an opportunity to respond at the time.

“It remains unclear whether this leak was cleared internally through the proper channels. Either way, it was a brazen attempt to shift blame,” the senators wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

This news is reigniting Republican scorn over Biden’s decision to place Kahl, who oversaw the botched 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, in the Pentagon’s top policy post. Every single Republican senator opposed his nomination, and congressional sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon said Kahl’s weaponization of classified materials could prompt oversight investigations.

Wicker and Rubio are pressing the Pentagon to hold Kahl “accountable for his politicization of previously classified material.”

“This type of behavior is the reason every Senate Republican voted against Dr. Kahl’s nomination in 2021,” the senators write.

As the administration grapples with the political fallout over its decision to let the balloon travel across America, “Kahl appears to be spearheading a communications strategy that aims to hide the administration’s early missteps,” the senators allege in their letter. And in briefings with senators, Kahl and other officials sidestepped “questions regarding the U.S. government’s knowledge and actions prior to the shoot-down.”

Kahl, who is known for sporting a man purse and spends large amounts of time assembling lists about his musical taste, also has refused to answer questions about when the Biden administration first spotted the Chinese balloon. The senators claim that classified briefings provided by administration officials did not provide a clear picture of how the balloon was allowed to travel so far across the United States.

The senators are demanding the Pentagon provide them with information about exactly when senior Biden administration officials learned of the spy balloon and “at what point you, and the president, were provided response options.”

Thus far, the administration has provided conflicting answers about when it knew about the balloon. U.S. Northern Command is believed to have spotted the spy balloon on Jan. 28, when it was over the Aleutian Islands, but top Pentagon leaders like Austin and Kahl did not know of it until several days later, “by which point the balloon had traversed Alaska and Canada and re-entered the United States,” according to Wicker and Rubio.

The lawmakers say they will not end their oversight efforts until all of the outstanding questions are answered.

“It is imperative for Congress to understand why this Chinese surveillance balloon was not stopped sooner so we can help the Department of Defense and the intelligence community better protect our airspace,” they write.

One senior congressional source working on the matter told the Free Beacon that Kahl’s efforts to deflect blame are “already rubbing people the wrong way” on Capitol Hill. “There’s no question the appetite to hold Kahl accountable for his partisan behavior is growing larger.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

New York School Teachers Detail LGBTQ+ Indoctrination Plan In Classrooms; ‘Have Your Drag Queens Come In’ … ‘Write a Math Sheet and Put a Picture of Someone On There Who is a Non-Binary’

• Cynthia Clo, Special Education Teacher, Albany School District: “You can just be — I don’t want to use the word insidious. The word I want to use is just quietly disruptive. Just, you know, as a classroom teacher, in your buildings, you put your little rainbow sticker up.”
• Clo: “You could read the Jazz story or have your Drag Queens come in and read the Jazz story, if you want to. Or you could just quietly read books. You don’t even bring attention to them.”
• Clo: “You know, if you’re writing a math sheet — write a math sheet and put a picture of someone on there who’s like, you know, a non-binary looking kind of person.”
• Mike Smith, American Sign Language Teacher, W.T. Clarke Middle School, East Meadow School District: “There’s a lot of opportunity for kids to have to go on hormone blockers, which would pause their development so that they have time to — maybe have a few extra years to kind of think about where they want to go. Because the longer that you go through adolescence and puberty, the less you could do if that child really does identify as transgender and wants to be able to go a different avenue. Being able to do that is a great conversation.”
• Smith: “These kids are coming up to me like, ‘I just want to share with you that I, you know, I identify as trans. Like, I really prefer this. Please don’t tell home.’ And then, like, I didn’t realize how many kids were like this…That was the class that I was like, ‘Let’s watch some drag. Let’s talk about it. Let’s have fun.’”

[NEW YORK – Mar. 9, 2023] Project Veritas released a second video today exposing corruption in the New York education system, this time featuring two educators who attended the EdCamp Long Island teacher conference. Both individuals were recorded discussing how they promote transgender ideology to their students.

Cynthia Clo, who works as a Special Education Teacher in the Albany School District, suggested covert strategies for implementing her indoctrination plans in the classroom.

“You can just be — I don’t want to use the word insidious. The word I want to use is just quietly disruptive. Just, you know, as a classroom teacher, in your buildings, you put your little rainbow sticker up,” Clo said.

“You can just do it on a quiet — a book you read, the language you use in your classroom. The opening of your kids’ minds to other opportunities, to other pathways,” she said.

Clo focused her ideas primarily on how to affect students’ minds on the transgender topic.

“You could read the Jazz story or have your Drag Queens come in and read the Jazz story, if you want to. Or you could just quietly read books. You don’t even bring attention to them,” she said.

“You know, if you’re writing a math sheet — write a math sheet and put a picture of someone on there who’s like, you know, a non-binary looking kind of person.”

Another educator, Mike Smith, is also featured in this latest Veritas investigation.

Smith is an American Sign Language Teacher who works at W.T. Clarke Middle School. This school is in the East Meadow School District in Long Island, the same district as Assistant Superintendent Dave Casamento.

Smith was recorded talking about hormone blockers and Drag Queen shows for young students.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for kids to have to go on hormone blockers, which would pause their development so that they have time to — maybe have a few extra years to kind of think about where they want to go. Because the longer that you go through adolescence and puberty, the less you could do if that child really does identify as transgender and wants to be able to go a different avenue. Being able to do that is a great conversation,” Smith said.

“If that student develops some more autonomy and wants to be able to make a big decision about whether it’s surgery or going on hormones, or whatnot, that transition is going to be a little bit more challenging than if they were able to have that validation earlier on in their life,” he said.

“These kids are coming up to me like, ‘I just want to share with you that I, you know, I identify as trans. Like, I really prefer this. Please don’t tell home.’ And then, like, I didn’t realize how many kids were like this…That was the class that I was like, ‘Let’s watch some drag. Let’s talk about it. Let’s have fun.’”

SOURCE: Project Veritas

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) just reintroduced a bill that consists of a single powerful sentence: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2023.” It’s refreshing to see a succinct and straightforward bill that our representatives can read in its entirety before being expected to vote it into law, but that is only one message this bill sends about the current state of big government. 

Our founders established a decentralized government to serve citizens who are empowered and responsible for their nation. But that government has been steadily expanding. Power is continually being removed from the local and state levels, and handed to unelected bureaucrats in various federal departments intended to regulate every aspect of American life. 

Massie is not the first to suggest the termination of big governmental departments. President Ronald Reagan called to “dismantle” the Department of Education, saying, “There’s only one way to shrink the size and cost of big government, and that is by eliminating agencies that are not needed and are getting in the way of a solution.” He also warned that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” This has never been more evident than it is today. It has become necessary to shrink the size and cost of our ever-expanding government and return power to the states and citizens. 

Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed a historic bill to return the power of education to parents. The bill safeguards parents’ fundamental right to make decisions regarding the intellectual and moral education their children receive. The government was never intended to have the power to dictate how or what the children of our nation are taught. That responsibility should rest on parents. And because of the diversity of thought across the nation, individual states should be empowering their local parents. 

States across the nation are taking back the power of education for their citizens by introducing and passing legislation to expand school choice opportunities for parents who want a say in where and what their children are learning. The intent is to fund students rather than systems so that parents are empowered to facilitate the best possible education for their children, whether in a public-school setting or by some other means.

COVID illuminated the problem of big government restrictions on parental rights in education. Schools across the nation were arbitrarily shut down based on hyperpartisan federal agency recommendations, displacing millions of American school children. Parents found themselves helpless in the face of big government power over their children’s education, and they were forced to watch as their children suffered devastating educational and social losses.

Parents are becoming increasingly concerned about what their children are being taught in the government schools they are geographically obligated to attend. This has led to a national wave of support for state-implemented school choice programs. Parents want their tax dollars to fund students, not failing government schools. 

Public schools are routinely failing to educate our children, and it will affect the future of this nation. In Chicago alone, 55 schools reported that not a single student was grade-level proficient in math or reading, even after billions of state and federal tax dollars were dumped into these failing schools. Parents want schools to step up and work for families to thoroughly educate their children rather than being handed taxpayer funding regardless of poor performance. 

In addition to concerns about the quality of their children’s education, parents are becoming increasingly aware of the critical race and gender theory being promoted in schools. Despite failing to teach children basic academics like reading, math, and science, this woke ideology is promoted and sometimes even enforced by the federal government to promote their radical agendas. 

Just last year, 22 states sued the Biden Administration for threatening to withhold citizens’ tax dollars used as federal funding for school lunch programs if schools did not implement the administration’s radical gender policies. The federal government was willing to hold tax dollars hostage to force their own agenda because they don’t care about the wishes of the citizens. They only care about their own power. 

Florida has paved the way in addressing this issue with House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights In Education Act. While the mainstream media gaslit the American public by using disparaging and misleading nicknames for the bill, parents—both in Florida and across the nation—overwhelmingly support the content of the bill. Parents want to be aware of and involved in what their children are being taught, both intellectually and morally. That is not an outrageous position. Parents should be empowered to take responsibility for the education of their children. Recently ranked number one in the country for parental empowerment in education, Florida is showing the nation what it means to return the power to the people. 

Our founders established a government for the people and by the people. Over the years, however, politicians have capitalized on every opportunity to seize power and convince citizens to relinquish their rights and privileges in exchange for empty promises and platitudes. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” It’s time to remind our expanding government that the power is with the American people. We must safeguard our nation for the rising generation.

With an election year approaching and the citizenry increasingly fed-up with outrageous levels of crime and illegal immigration, the Biden White House appears finally to be embracing common sense and taking aggressive action. This action, however, is just another scam. The administration’s new policies may sound good on the surface, but actually make the problems it created even worse. 

The spin doctors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have run out of talking points to explain away the disaster that Joe Biden has created along our southern border. Rather than do something effective, like beef up enforcement and finish the border wall, Team Biden has chosen gimmickry. 

The White House has touted the “CBP One” phone app as a solution to turn “irregular migration,” i.e. illegal immigration, into “regular” immigration. The idea is that migrants can first use the app to submit photos and information prior to reaching the border, and then use it to schedule an appointment with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials at a port of entry.

To make the CBP One app the standard in border processing, the White House has also issued a rule that migrants who cross the border illegally and fail to use the app would be ineligible for asylum. The stated purpose is to reduce the chaos at the border that has led to more than 2.3 million border encounters in fiscal year 2022.

This has prompted a lawsuit by 20 states against the administration over the plan, which would parole migrants using the app from four nations into the United States at a rate of about 30,000 per month. In its amicus brief in support of the states, lawyers from the Immigration Reform Law Institute explained why the Biden plan to restore law and order is actually itself against the law. 

Parole, the brief explained, may only be granted on a case-by-case basis for “significant public benefit.” No significant benefit to the public is served by paroling any particular alien under this program. The program’s supposed benefit—the reduction of “irregular migration” by providing the app alternative—is only significantly advanced by paroling tens of thousands of other illegal aliens en masse. And it is just such mass parole abuse that Congress meant to shut down when it added the case-by-case requirement.

This is Biden Administration trickery at its finest. After creating a massive humanitarian crisis by flouting the law, it is now trying to create the appearance of addressing the crisis by using bureaucratic sleight of hand to contort what Congress has determined to be illegal conduct into legally permissible conduct by executive fiat. The will of the people, as well as the role of the other branches of the federal government, is relegated to the sidelines. 

There are numerous problems with this effort, in addition to the obvious question of how so many supposedly destitute citizens of poor countries are acquiring smart phones to use this app. Beyond that, even if such a program creates the appearance of less chaos at the border, the end result is still tens of thousands of noncitizens being admitted into the United States every month.

American citizens will still have to absorb the staggering costs to relocate, house, educate and medically treat these arrivals. Simply getting them here through a slightly less tumultuous process does not lessen the burden that we as a nation are increasingly unable to bear.

The plan to welcome so many noncitizens into the country steps right over existing law that requires the federal government to defend the border and deport those here illegally. The agenda of this White House, implemented by its activist Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas, is to reimagine the border patrol as a welcoming committee for anyone from another country who makes what is usually an illegitimate case for asylum.

Like most things in Biden World, this initiative is a healthy mix of a cynical, hyper-political agenda and rank incompetence. Many users report that the CBP One app is riddled with bugs and glitches. In fact, anti-borders activists are even complaining that the app’s many technical issues interfere with the rights of migrants to claim asylum. Leave it to this administration to find a way to irritate people on all sides of an issue.

This is a critical moment in the history of the United States. We are facing existential problems that demand serious leadership. Unfortunately, our current leadership has either created many of these problems or made them exponentially worse. The last thing Americans need is programs like the CBP One app that are marketed as innovative solutions but are actually just abusing our existing laws and processes to advance partisan interests.

Writing for the Guardian, Stephen Lester put it plainly: “So why is EPA unwilling to test for dioxins in the soil? My guess is because they know they will find it. And if they find it, they’ll have to address the many questions people are asking.” 

Under pressure, the EPA finally directed testing for dioxins approximately one month after residents were told by public health officials that they could safely remain in their homes. Why the callousness and lack of concern for the health and safety of the mostly white residents of the community around East Palestine, Ohio? The political philosophy of EPA Administrator Michael Regan raises legitimate concerns over whether this race-obsessed social justice advocate may have practiced the type of environmental racism he claims to be addressing.

But first, let’s dive into the emerging concerns over the dioxin contamination Lester predicted.

While we have heard much about the dangerous vinyl chloride carried by the Norfolk Southern cars that derailed in East Palestine early last month, and phosgene gas produced by burning it, as was deliberately done in the aftermath of the trainwreck, we have not as much about the dangers of dioxin. Lester, who serves as a toxicologist and the science director of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, raised an alarm over the lack of testing. He writes: 

This makes no sense. Testing for dioxin, a highly toxic substance, should have been one of the first things to look for, especially in the air once the decision was made to burn the vinyl chloride. There is no question that dioxins were formed in the vinyl chloride fire. They would have formed on the particulate matter—the black soot—in the cloud that was so clearly visible at the time of the burn. Now, the question is how much is in the soil where people live in and around East Palestine. Without testing, no one will know and the people who live there will remain in the dark, uncertain about their fate. 

As reported by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, dioxin environmental contamination has a known association with unexpected cancers in young people including, ovarian cancer, lymphoma, leukemia, and most prominently, thyroid cancer.

Residents around East Palestine complained that the plume of black smoke from the burning vinyl chloride dropped ash on residents as far as 15 miles away. The plume was so large, local weather radar detected it. 

But Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg would like you to remember that he is suffering, too. Apparently stung by criticism that he could not relate to the low income victims of the accident, Buttigieg complained that he unfairly received the brunt of the criticism of the federal response. While it’s hard to defend Buttigieg’s partisanship and incompetence, the man has a point. 

Buttigieg might bear some blame for the safety lapses if they could have been prevented by better government oversight, but that’s a separate question from the one about what to do in the aftermath of such an accident. The focus now should shift to the EPA and its stunning complacency in the face of the potential presence of cancer-causing dioxins infiltrating air, soil, and water.

We still don’t know everything about the identity of the officials who recommended venting and burning the vinyl chloride. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) took credit for the decision but did not indicate in his statement whether he first took input from the EPA. DeWine claimed the decision was necessary to avoid an explosion. However, Norfolk Southern’s list of impacted cars indicated that none of the five cars containing vinyl chloride were breached or leaking. 

EPA’s Regan earned his masters degree in public administration after earning a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and agriculture from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Students of environmental science at N.C. A&T study such topics as, “climate change,” “environmental justice,” and “environmental politics.” Indeed, Regan used the term “justice,” as in “environmental justice,” or “economic justice” a whopping 42 times during his confirmation hearing. 

In his previous job, he created North Carolina’s first “Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board.” Since arriving at the EPA, Regan has redirected millions in taxpayer funds to “environmental justice organizations.” In his April 2022 testimony, he proposed spending an additional $300 million to “expand support for community-based organizations, indigenous organizations, tribes, states, local governments, and territorial governments in pursuit of identifying and addressing environmental justice issues through multi-partner collaborations.” That, of course, is a euphemism for paying off allies of the Democratic Party using taxpayer funds that were supposed to be spent on the environment.

On February 21, more than a week before the EPA even ordered testing for dioxins, Regan participated in a post-trainwreck photo op during which he gingerly sipped tap water freshly poured from a resident’s kitchen sink. Like Buttigieg during his visit, Regan’s discomfort was palpable.

In Regan’s view, the EPA should refocus its attention on previously underserved communities with an eye towards making up for perceived racial inequities. “Neither an individual’s skin color nor the wealth of their ZIP code should determine whether they have clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, or healthy environments in which their children can play,” Regan acknowledges. But that hasn’t stopped him from re-ordering the EPA’s priorities so that it does consider race by establishing a quota goal of “delivering at least 40 percent of the overall benefits of relevant federal investments to underserved and overburdened communities.” That’s bureaucrat-speak for minority communities.

The East Palestine trainwreck has caused many to wonder whether the United States might be experiencing a surge in industrial and transportation accidents. The East Palestine accident is among five recent Norfolk Southern train derailments in the state of Ohio alone. As USA Today reports, “In the last decade, hazardous materials have spilled or leaked from trains more than 5,000 times in the United States.” In the last year, 32 rail spills were classified as “serious.”

While the Biden Administration has tried to be as inclusive as possible in appointing key cabinet positions, there exists the possibility that he lost sight of the core responsibilities of these positions in the rush to satisfy political considerations. 

When public safety is at issue, Americans should get the best administrators available regardless of race or sexual orientation. As we have seen, the consequences can be deadly when politics supplants competence. 

Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told lawmakers on Wednesday that U.S. tax dollars funded risky gain-of-function research at a Chinese virus lab at the heart of the COVID-19 origin controversy.

Redfield made the remark while responding to questions during a March 8 session of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) asked the former CDC official whether it was likely that “American tax dollars funded the gain-of-function research that created this virus?” referring to the hypothesis that the pathogen behind COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan.

“I think there’s no doubt that NIH was funding gain-of-function research,” Redfield replied, adding that he believes funding came from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies.

Taxpayer-Funded Gain-of-Function Research?

The view that American tax dollars funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has been disputed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, and others.

Gain-of-function research involves altering the properties of a pathogen, such as its virulence, in order to study its potential impact on human health. Such research is controversial because of the potential risks it poses as it makes viruses more lethal.

The question of whether U.S. tax dollars were used to fund gain-of-function research in China has been in the spotlight for some time and remains steeped in controversy as the definition of what exactly constitutes such research is a matter of debate.

“No one knows exactly what counts as gain-of-function, so we disagree as to what needs oversight, much less what that oversight should be,” said Nicholas Evans, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, who specializes in biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, in remarks to ASBMB Today.

But some scientists see it as more cut and dried. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, has said the research amounted to gain-of-function and that Fauci and others lied when insisting it was not.

“The materials confirm the grants supported the construction—in Wuhan—of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells,” Ebright wrote on Twitter.

He was referring to Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by The Intercept, detailing the work of the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund research into bat coronaviruses at the Chinese lab in Wuhan.

“The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at [the Wuhan Institute of Virology] are untruthful,” he added.

NIH and NIAID have denied that the funding amounted to gain-of-function research, while Fauci himself has repeatedly insisted that it did not.

“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci said at a Senate hearing on May 11, 2021.

Collins said in a statement on May 19 that “neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.”

Energy Department Backs Lab Leak Theory

The question of whether American taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in China has come back into sharper focus after the U.S. Energy Department—which oversees a network of 17 laboratories in the United States—concluded that the virus that causes COVID-19 likely leaked from the Wuhan lab.

The hearing on Capitol Hill was scheduled after it emerged that the Energy Department had changed its prior assessment of the pandemic’s origins.

Some scientists still strongly back the natural origin theory even though no host animal has been identified more than two years after the pandemic broke out.

While some U.S. agencies lean toward the natural origin theory, the Energy Department has joined the FBI in assessing that COVID-19 likely originated in the Wuhan lab.

Redfield also addressed the question of the lab leak theory in his testimony.

“Even given the information that’s surfaced in the three years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, some have contended that there is really no point in investigating the origins of this virus. I strongly disagree. There is a global need to know what we are dealing with in COVID-19 virus because it affects how we approach the problem to try to prevent the next pandemic,” he wrote in his opening statement.

He added that, because there’s evidence to support the lab leak theory and since gain-of-function research was being carried out on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab, there should be a halt to gain-of-function experiments.

“Gain-of-function research has long been controversial within the scientific community, and, in my own opinion, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a case study on the potential dangers of such research. While many believe that gain-of-function research is critical to get ahead of viruses by developing vaccines, in this case, I believe it was the exact opposite, unleashing a new virus on the world without any means of stopping it and resulting in the deaths of millions of people,” he said.

“Because of this, it is my opinion that we should call for a moratorium on gain-of-function research until we have a broader debate and we come to a consensus as a community about the value of gain-of-function research. This debate should not be limited to the scientific community. If the decision is to continue gain-of-function research then it must be determined how and where to conduct this research in a safe, responsible, and effective way.”

Meanwhile, 7 out of 11 scientists who are virologists or work in related fields were asked by The Intercept about the documents the publication obtained about EcoHealth Alliance funding of virus research, and they said that the work appears to meet the NIH criteria for gain-of-function research.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The House panel investigating the weaponization of the federal government said Tuesday the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has orchestrated “an aggressive campaign to harass Twitter” as part of its “unusual response” to Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social network.

The Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an interim report highlighting the FTC’s apparent overreach in making more than 350 specific demands for information within a period of less than three months after Musk took the helm.

According to the report, the federal agency inundated Twitter with demands to reveal information about hiring and firing decisions and “every internal communication relating to Elon Musk.”

Particularly concerning for the panel, the FTC wanted the names of journalists who were granted access to internal Twitter files during their work “to expose abuses by Big Tech and the federal government.”

Among others, the FTC sent over 60 letters demanding information about Twitter’s subscription product alone. The agency also demanded to know if Twitter was “selling its office equipment” and “all of the reasons” why former FBI official Jim Baker was fired.

“These demands have no basis in the FTC’s statutory mission and appear to be the result of partisan pressure to target Twitter and silence Musk,” the report states (pdf).

The committee said it recently obtained dozens of nonpublic FTC letters to Twitter, which it noted fall directly within its authority to investigate and report “on instances of the federal government’s authority being weaponized against U.S. citizens.”

Demands for Journalists’ Names ‘Inappropriate’

The House committee’s report criticizes the FTC’s demand for information about journalists, calling it inappropriate in any setting.

The report emphasizes that the FTC’s “campaign to harass Twitter” could have a chilling effect on the ability of journalists to report on matters of public interest and calls for greater protection of First Amendment rights.

After journalist Matt Taibbi published the first installment of the “Twitter Files,” exposing a government-Big Tech censorship machine, the FTC sent its first letter to Twitter.

The panel’s report notes it was telling that the FTC’s first demand “did not concern what private user information may have been at risk.”

“Instead, the FTC demanded that Twitter ‘[i]dentify all journalists and other members of the media to whom’ Twitter has granted access to since Musk bought the company.”

The FTC named the journalists involved in the initial disclosures, including Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Abigail Shrier.

The agency also demanded to know any “other members of the media to whom You have granted any type of access to the Company’s internal communications for any reason whatsoever,” according to the report.

“There is no reason the FTC needs to know every journalist with whom Twitter was engaging. Even more troubling than the burden on the company, the FTC’s demand represents a government inquiry into First Amendment-protected activity,” the report states.

“It is an agency of the federal government demanding that a private company reveal the names of the journalists who are engaged in reporting about matters of public interest, including potential government misconduct,” the report continues. “While the FTC’s inquiry would be inappropriate in any setting, it is especially inappropriate in the context of journalists disclosing how social media companies helped the government to censor online speech.”

Musk responded on Twitter regarding reports about the federal agency’s request for the names of journalists.

“This is a serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency,” Musk said.

‘Politically Motivated’ Left Wing Pressure

The FTC used its consent decree with Twitter as a pretext to harass the social network and received pressure from left-wing individuals and groups, according to the report. That consent agreement, which was later revised, acts as a safeguard of users’ personal information.

In 2022, before Musk’s takeover, FTC Chair Lina Khan assured the Judiciary Committee that the agency “acts only in the public interest” and is “confined” by its statutory authority, the report states.

However, the nonpublic information obtained by the House panel disputes this.

Citing its revised consent agreement, the FTC “began its barrage of demands” just two weeks after Musk became the CEO in October 2022.

The day it fired off its first letters, the agency said publicly that it was “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern” and warned that the “revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

The report notes that the timing of the FTC’s actions “strongly suggests that its reliance on the consent decree is a pretext.” The report notes that Musk became CEO of Twitter on Oct. 27, 2022, and that the FTC sent its first two letters with over a dozen demands on Nov. 10, 2022.

However, under the terms of the revised consent agreement, which formed the pretext of the FTC’s actions, Twitter was not required to implement its new privacy and information security program until Nov. 22, 2022.

“In other words, the FTC started this heavy-handed compliance monitoring two weeks after Musk acquired Twitter, but two weeks before there was even a program in place to monitor,” the report states.

The report states that left-wing individuals and groups pressured the federal government to take action, citing their objections to Musk’s stated intentions to make Twitter a bastion of free speech on the internet.

Among the left-wing groups vocal in their objections to Musk’s purchase of Twitter was an organization called Open Markets Institute, where FTC Chair Khan once worked.

This organization, described in the report as a “left-wing political advocacy” group, wrote to the FTC specifically urging it to use its consent agreement “as a vehicle to attempt to thwart Musk’s efforts to reorient the company” toward his free speech goals, the report states.

“The strong inference from these facts is that Twitter’s rediscovered focus on free speech is being met with politically motivated attempts to thwart Elon Musk’s goals,” the report states.

“The FTC’s demands did not occur in a vacuum. They appear to be the result of loud voices on the left—including elected officials—urging the federal government to intervene in Musk’s acquisition and management of the company,” the report continues. “The FTC’s harassment of Twitter is likely due to one fact: Musk’s self-described ‘absolutist’ commitment to free expression in the digital town square.”

In a statement to The Epoch Times, an FTC spokesperson defended its investigation into Twitter’s compliance with the consent decree.

“Protecting consumers’ privacy is exactly what the FTC is supposed to do,” the spokesperson said. “It should come as no surprise that career staff at the commission are conducting a rigorous investigation into Twitter’s compliance with a consent order that came into effect long before Mr. Musk purchased the company.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is raising new questions as to whether the Biden administration pressured the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to avoid issuing a public statement on President Joe Biden’s handling of potentially classified documents.

The questions about the White House’s role in the classified documents case come about after NARA general counsel Gary Stern appeared for a transcribed interview with the Oversight Committee on Jan. 31. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said that, during this interview, Stern described having prepared a statement on Jan. 9 on NARA’s behalf, addressing the news that documents with classified markings were found at Biden’s former office space and Delaware residence. NARA did not release Stern’s initial statement and Stern testified that someone from outside NARA held back the release of the prepared statement. He did not specify which outside individual withheld the NARA statement on the Biden classified documents case.

Comer sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients on Tuesday, asking whether anyone from the Biden administration was involved in suppressing the NARA statement. Comer specifically asked Zients if any White House employee or representative of the president “inform[ed] any employee of NARA to withhold any public statements regarding President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.” Comer also asked for any documents or communications the White House may have regarding a potential request that NARA avoid releasing a public statement on Biden’s classified documents case.

During the Jan. 31 interview, the committee also asked Stern whether Biden can release any statements between his attorneys and NARA. Stern testified that Biden is “free to release” his communications with NARA, adding that “we treat them as confidential, but the recipients, you know, can act independently if they want to.”

Differences to Trump Classified Documents Case

In his letter to Zients, Comer said NARA’s response to the Biden classified documents case was “in complete contrast” to how the agency responded to reports the year prior about former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office.

While NARA agreed to an outside request to withhold its statement on Biden’s handling of classified documents, NARA shared a statement with the Washington Post within hours of its Feb. 7, 2022, report that Trump had classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

NARA’s February 2022 statement said the records in Trump’s possession “should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021” and the agency said it’s continuing to search for additional records in his possession.

Trump has repeatedly said he declassified the documents that were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, and has said Biden did not declassify the documents that were discovered in his possession.

On Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee—issued his own statement, claiming Stern and NARA were complying with Republican requests for information while being careful not to interfere with any ongoing investigations.

“Committee Republicans continue to make unfounded accusations of disparate treatment by the National Archives and the Department of Justice in their efforts to preserve presidential records and secure classified records,” Raskin wrote.

Raskin further alleged Comer made a “misleading claim that the Biden Administration improperly suppressed information” about his handling of classified documents.

NTD reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

By Hyunsu Yim and Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters)—North Korea said any move to shoot down one of its test missiles would be considered a declaration of war and blamed a joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea for growing tensions, state media KCNA said on Tuesday.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, warned in a statement that Pyongyang would see it as a “declaration of war” if the U.S. took military action against the North’s strategic weapon tests.

She also hinted that the North could fire more missiles into the Pacific Ocean. The United States and its allies have never shot down North Korean ballistic missiles, which are banned by the United Nations Security Council, but the question drew new scrutiny since the North suggested it will fire more missiles over Japan.

“The Pacific Ocean does not belong to the dominium of the U.S. or Japan,” Kim said.

Analysts have said that if North Korea follows through on its threat to turn the Pacific Ocean into a “firing range”, it would allow the isolated and nuclear-armed state to make technical advances in addition to signalling its military resolve.

In a separate statement, the chief of the Foreign News Section at North Korea’s Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. of “aggravating” the situation by conducting a joint air drill with a B-52 bomber on Monday and planning U.S.-South Korea field exercises.

In response, South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North, said Pyongyang’s “reckless nuclear and missile development” is to blame for the deteriorating situation.

The United States deployed the B-52 bomber for a joint drill with South Korean fighter jets, in what South Korea’s defence ministry said was a show of force against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.

The two countries will conduct more than 10 days of large-scale military exercises known as the “Freedom Shield” drills starting next week.

On Tuesday, U.S. and South Korean warplanes practised quickly taking off in a drill designed in response to North Korean threats to destroy airfields, Yonhap news agency reported.

North Korea’s army said its enemy launched 30 rounds of artillery near the border on Tuesday and it demanded an immediate halt to what it called “provocative actions”.

South Korea denied doing so and said the claim was groundless.

Around 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, leaving the countries technically at war.

(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim and Josh Smith; Editing by Sandra Maler, Stephen Coates and Ed Osmond)

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Two separate polls in recent weeks have found that Virginians prefer Republican governor Glenn Youngkin over Democratic president Joe Biden by double digits.

According to a Roanoke College poll released last week, 57 percent of Virginians approve of Youngkin’s job performance, compared with just 38 percent who approve of Biden’s—a staggering near-20-point gap. A Mason-Dixon poll released last month found an 11-point gap, with Youngkin receiving 56 percent favorability compared with Biden’s 45 percent.

In the Roanoke poll, Youngkin’s favorability is at its highest point since the pollster first started asking the question last year. Only 35 percent of Virginia voters disapprove of Youngkin, Roanoke found, whereas a staggering 55 percent disapprove of Biden. Once again, Mason-Dixon found similar results, with only 31 percent disapproving of Youngkin but 52 percent disapproving of Biden.

The polls stand in stark contrast to how the media have presented Youngkin’s popularity. The Washington Post, for example, last year trumpeted a single poll that found Youngkin’s approval rating at the time was 2 points below his disapproval rating. The Post does not appear to have reported on the new polls.

The results are also a sharp pivot for Virginia, which in 2020 voted for Biden by 10 points.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Comment comes as city Democrats push to lessen penalties for violent criminals

Facing a record spike in homicides, Washington, D.C.’s chief of police on Monday said the city needs to “keep violent people in jail.”

“What we got to do, if we really want to see homicides go down, is keep bad guys with guns in jail,” police chief Robert Contee said during a press conference alongside Mayor Muriel Bowser (D.). “Because when they’re in jail, they can’t be in communities shooting people.”

Contee’s comments come as the left-wing Democratic city council backpedals on a proposed criminal code reform that would reduce penalties and in many cases eliminate minimum penalties for violent crimes. D.C. Council chairman Phil Mendelson (D.) on Monday revoked the bill after President Joe Biden announced he would not veto a Republican-backed resolution to block the city’s bill. Mendelson tried to retract it before the Senate could hold a vote. Republican senator Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), however, said that it was too late to avoid a Senate vote.

“No matter how hard they try, the Council cannot avoid accountability for passing this disastrous, dangerous D.C. soft-on-crime bill that will make residents and visitors less safe,” Hagerty said.

Many House Democrats expressed frustration with Biden’s decision to veto the city’s criminal code reform.

“People are rip roarin’ pissed,” one House Democrat told Axios.

Shootings and homicides have surged in D.C. in recent years: 2019 saw 135 fatal and 557 non-fatal shootings, which rose in 2022 to 174 and 710, respectively.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) accused the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers of working to oust Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and took aim at Democrats for reserving “special scorn” for the conservative prime minister.

“There is one foreign leader for whom the Democratic Party seems to reserve special scorn. Leading Democrats have called him a ‘reactionary,’ a ‘racist,’ an ‘ethno-nationalist,’” Cotton said during a Tuesday speech on the Senate floor. “They’ve accused him of committing ‘war crimes’ and of leading an ‘apartheid state.’ President Biden has called him ‘extreme’ and said they don’t agree on ‘a damn thing.’ Strong words.”

“Who is this monster, you may ask? Were the Democrats talking about Vladimir Putin? Or Xi Jinping? Or perhaps Ayatollah Khamenei?” Cotton asked. “No, they were referring to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and one of America’s best friends. Once again, these Democrats have proven their tendency to coddle our enemies and condemn our friends.”

Cotton cited the Washington Free Beacon’s reporting as evidence the Biden administration is working to foment political chaos in Israel that could topple Netanyahu’s conservative governing coalition. Since 2020, the State Department has funneled more than $38,000 to the Movement for Quality Government (MQG), a far-left Israeli nonprofit currently stoking nationwide anti-Netanyahu protests. The funding has fueled questions about how U.S. taxpayer dollars made their way to an organization with a clear partisan agenda. Cotton indicated the State Department may have breached its own regulations that bar funding to foreign political groups.

“The State Department doesn’t even deny it’s funneling money to these left-wing activities, by the way,” Cotton said. “Which is troubling, because it’s a clear violation of the usual State Department policy against funding foreign partisan organizations. Not only is this U.S.-funded organization subverting a foreign government, it’s subverting the government of one of our closest allies. Secretary Blinken should immediately apologize to the prime minister of Israel, demand your money back, and open an investigation into how this happened.”

Cotton said that efforts to interfere in Israel’s democracy were put into overdrive during the Obama administration, which funneled “hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars to a group called the OneVoice Movement,” a group that helped run “anti-Netanyahu ads” in Israel.

“Now Joe Biden is simply following in Obama’s footstep by trying to sabotage Netanyahu,” Cotton said.

Other lawmakers also have raised concern about the funding to MQG.

“The State Department should never fund foreign partisan organizations in allied democracies,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Free Beacon this week. “If the shoe was on the other foot, the Biden administration would accuse Israel of interfering in our elections. Congress should absolutely review the State Department’s potential funding of partisan politics in Israel.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Rob and Mia Bonta are known for their soft-on-crime policies and ethical controversies

California assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D.), the wife of California’s attorney general, on Tuesday unilaterally killed a bill that would raise sentencing for violent crimes committed with guns.

Bonta was one of several Democrats on the assembly’s public safety committee who voted to sink the proposal, from freshman Republican assemblyman Bill Essayli. But in a highly unusual move, Bonta went beyond a simple no vote and blocked Essayli’s request to revise and reintroduce his legislation. The Democratic majority did not intervene, allowing her to table the bill for the rest of the session.

Bonta’s maneuver comes as violent crime, including homicide and rape, is spiking statewide. As the state’s top cop, Rob Bonta aligns with progressive prosecutors like Los Angeles’s George Gascon, whose “progressive” policies have led to a rise in crime. Rob Bonta has largely dedicated his office’s resources to investigating law enforcement and promoting social justice.

A legislative staffer for the assembly told the Washington Free Beacon that he had never seen a member block a bill from reconsideration in 10 years of working in the state capitol.

Essayli’s bill would have required California judges to add jail time on sentences for criminals who used guns in commission of a violent crime. The proposal would have partially repealed a 2017 state law giving judges the option to dismiss such “sentencing enhancements,” and a newly enforceable 2022 law requires judges to drop additional jail time “if it is in the furtherance of justice to do so.”

Law enforcement and victims’ advocates urged lawmakers to pass the bill, describing murders and violence they claimed were on the rise because of the state’s “soft-on-crime” policies.

During his testimony, Essayli noted that gun violence primarily affects minority communities like Oakland, which Bonta represents. Essayli noted that in 2020, 65 percent of Oakland’s homicide victims were black, and recounted the story of a murder victim’s mother who said she could never really heal “if there is no justice.”

This appeal seemed to strike a nerve with Bonta, who snapped: “You don’t need to talk to me about mothers in Oakland.” The assemblywoman then claimed that her constituents were not as worried about gun violence as by the prospect of having “their sons and brothers and fathers and mothers being taken away from them because of the disproportionate impact that enhancements have had on their community.”

“Longer sentencing does not prevent crime, certainty of apprehension does,” Bonta said Tuesday. Committee chair Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D.) also took a shot at Essayli’s credibility.

“You’re new, you’re a freshman,” Jones-Sawyer said, noting that Essayli did not appreciate the assembly’s efforts throughout “a long, 10-year process to be able to make the justice system more just.”

The Bontas came under fire last month when Mia, who succeeded her husband after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) named him attorney general in 2021, was tapped to oversee her husband’s department budget, a move experts said was ethically dubious. No strangers to criticism, the couple came under fire during Rob Bonta’s tenure in the legislature, when he established a foundation that funneled money to the nonprofit where his wife earned six figures as the CEO.

Mia Bonta’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Fires caused by lithium-ion batteries have killed 8 and injured almost 200 in New York City alone

What’s happening: The lithium-ion batteries that power electric bikes and scooters keep exploding, starting fires, and killing people.

• Earlier this year, a 63-year-old man was killed and nearly a dozen people injured when an e-scooter battery exploded and ignited a blaze that engulfed a three-story house in Queens, N.Y. Days later, 18 children were injured when an unauthorized day care center, also in Queens, caught fire due to a lithium-ion battery explosion.

• Earlier this month, an electric bike battery sparked a massive blaze in the West Bronx that injured seven people—two seriously—and destroyed a local grocery store.

By the numbers: In 2022, electric bike and scooter batteries caused 216 fires that injured 147 people and killed six in New York City alone. So far this year, the batteries have been blamed for 22 fires resulting in 36 injuries and two deaths in New York City.

Why it matters: This is also another scandal that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has failed to address since taking office. Buttigieg, 41, is obsessed with bicycles of all kinds. He purchased an electric bicycle shortly after moving to Washington, D.C., in 2021.

Context: In addition to repaving the road in front of his house, one of Buttigieg’s only accomplishments as mayor of South Bend, Ind., where he served eight years before running for president at the age of 37, was cutting a deal with Lime, an electric bike and scooter rental service, to establish a fleet of the dangerous contraptions in the college town. The Lime bikes and scooters Buttigieg worked so hard to bring to South Bend have since been turned into scrap metal.

What they’re saying: “Green bikes. The Lime bikes. That’s about all I really know of [Mayor Pete Buttigieg], man. But does anybody know him? Nah, I don’t know if anybody knows him or not. I don’t know anybody that does know him.” —Mark Anthony Plummer, black resident of South Bend

Bottom line: This is the future liberals want.

FACT CHECK: Pete Buttigieg Is a ‘Capable and Competent’ Leader

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

EPA restrictions would impose new compliance costs on coal plants, which could force them to close

 Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed a rule that could force coal plants to close—just months after the White House walked back Biden’s vow to shut down coal plants “all across America.”

The proposed rule strengthens EPA regulations that require coal plants to filter certain metals out of their wastewater before release, a mandate that would likely require plant operators to invest in technology upgrades to comply. Those compliance costs, the Washington Post reported, could accelerate the phasing out of coal power by pushing plants to “shut down or switch to burning natural gas” rather than pay the increased costs under the rule. Coal power was the second-largest source of electricity in the United States in 2021, generating roughly 22 percent of the nation’s total output, according to Energy Information Administration data.

While the EPA’s announcement does not mention carbon emissions, the rule’s potential impact reflects the intensity with which the Biden administration is working to fight climate change. It also flies in the face of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s insistence that the administration is not targeting coal plants.

Jean-Pierre in November walked back anti-coal comments from Biden, who said during a San Diego rally that the administration would be “shutting these [coal] plants down all across America and having wind and solar power.” Biden, Jean-Pierre insisted, comes from “coal country” and was not threatening the industry’s workers but rather observing the economic reality of the impending energy transition. “The president’s words, we believe, were twisted,” Jean-Pierre said.

The coal industry, which employed more than 120,000 Americans in 2021, disagreed. Coal industry group America’s Power, for example, assailed Biden’s “call to shut down coal power plants,” saying a switch from coal to wind power would cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion dollars. Now, the EPA’s proposed rule could expedite that transition.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

This is far from the first time the Biden administration has contradicted itself on energy policy. Climate czar John Kerry on Tuesday attacked oil and gas companies for announcing plans to increase production, an action that Biden for months has urged those companies to take.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Comes less than a week after Biden angered Dems for opposing DC crime bill

For the second time in two weeks, Joe Biden incited backlash from congressional Democrats after the White House announced it is weighing whether to reenact a Trump-era immigration policy.

Democratic congressmen are attacking Biden’s potential border crisis solution, which would bring back detention of families that cross the border illegally, the New York Times reported. Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.) called the idea “callous and inhumane,” while Rep. Maxwell Frost (D., Fla.) was “disgusted and disappointed” at the possibility of reinstating family detentions.

The report comes less than a week after Biden angered members of his own party for supporting a Republican-backed resolution to block Washington, D.C.’s criminal justice reform, which would lessen penalties for violent crimes.

Talks of a new policy come as Title 42, a Trump policy that allows border patrol agents to turn away migrants at the border, ends in May. Without indicating whether such a policy would take effect, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden “wants to build an immigration system that is secure, orderly, and humane.”

This consideration from the White House marks an abrupt shift from Biden’s past criticism of family detention policies during the Trump administration.

In 2020, Joe Biden took to Twitter to object to the Trump administration’s handling of illegal immigrants. “Children should be released from ICE detention with their parents immediately,” Biden wrote. “This is pretty simple, and I can’t believe I have to say it: Families belong together.”

Southern Border Patrol encounters increased by 38 percent between fiscal years 2021-22, with 2.4 million encounters in 2022.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Just another day in our nation’s capital

What happened: A Washington, D.C., police officer on Wednesday narrowly thwarted an attempted carjacking at Union Station, where dozens of left-wing activists were protesting in favor of dramatically reduced penalties for carjacking and other crimes.

“I come out of Union Station and walk into an attempt[ed] car robbery,” freelance journalist Andrew Leyden wrote in a Twitter post that included a video of the incident. “Delivery driver left car running and guy jumped in. Another person saw it and called over cop. Robber fled off, running past the D.C. Criminal Reform protest outside (seriously).”

Context: The U.S. Senate was expected to vote Wednesday on a measure to overturn controversial “crime reform” measures adopted by the D.C. city council. The criminal code revisions, approved in 2022, would reduce sentencing guidelines for crimes such as carjacking, burglary, and illegal gun possession. The Republican-led House voted in February to overturn the law, and President Joe Biden last week spoke out against D.C.’s bill as well.

“I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the mayor’s objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” Biden wrote on Twitter. “If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did—I’ll sign it.”

Following Biden’s comments, the council chairman announced that the city was withdrawing the measure.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

House Democrats tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus spent the majority of a Wednesday hearing attacking the credibility of one witness who seems to have gotten things right from the beginning.

Three Democrats on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic repeatedly berated former New York Times editor Nicholas Wade, one of the first prominent exponents of the now-widely accepted theory that the coronavirus resulted from a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China. Rather than asking him about the lab leak theory, which has been embraced by the FBI and Energy Department, the members grilled Wade over a 2014 book he wrote that they claim promotes racist tropes about genetics.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D., Calif.), the ranking member of the select subcommittee, asserted that Wade should not take part in a hearing about the “origins of a pandemic that has disproportionately and overwhelmingly harmed communities of color.” Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D., Md.) and Jill Tokuda (D., Hawaii) also chastised Wade, who said he is not racist and does not “have anything in common with the views of white supremacists.”

The allegations of racism mirror those leveled early in the pandemic against proponents of the lab leak theory. Wade touted the theory in a ground-breaking May 2021 report that laid out evidence pointing to a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab leak hypothesis was widely dismissed early in the pandemic, with liberals suggesting that its proponents were promoting racist views of Chinese people.

Wade’s book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, draws on information gleaned from human genome mapping to dismiss the notion that race is a social construct. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, political scientist Charles Murray praised the book and noted that opposition to its argument was the result of “political correctness.”

Mfume suggested at Wednesday’s hearing that Wade’s theory of a lab leak fueled anti-Asian sentiments. He said that Wade has promoted a “conspiracy theory that somehow other minorities are so genetically different that they are culpable in some sort of way.”

Though Democrats focused on Wade, they insisted they are interested in exploring the lab leak theory. Ruiz said that Democrats “take seriously the charge of determining the coronavirus.” Tokuda said “we need to understand the origins of COVID-19.” In reality, just one Democrat, Rep. Debbie Dingell (Mich.), asked probing questions about the lab leak theory.

Wade asserted during the hearing that “the media was used” by some scientists to discredit the lab leak theory in favor of the “natural origin” hypothesis, which holds that the virus was transmitted to humans from an unidentified animal species.

Former CDC director Robert Redfield testified that an accidental lab leak was the most likely culprit for the pandemic. Redfield, who defended Wade as an “outstanding science reporter,” said that the biological characteristics, as well as the Chinese government’s response early in the pandemic, supported the lab leak theory. He said that the Chinese military took over the Wuhan Institute and replaced the lab’s ventilation system, steps that he said were “highly unusual.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

National Archives officials in November retrieved nine boxes of documents from the Boston office of Joe Biden’s lawyer, the agency revealed in a letter to Sens. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa).

National Archives has not yet reviewed the documents to determine whether they contain classified material, Fox News reported:

The Archives had not previously publicly disclosed the number of boxes taken from Boston. It had been reported that [Biden attorney Patrick] Moore had shipped boxes of documents from the Penn Biden Center to his Boston office before discovering the initial trove of classified documents at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

In response to questions by Johnson and Grassley in a Feb. 24 letter asking how and when the archives learned that records were transported to Boston, Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall responded the agency learned about it on Nov. 3, 2022.

“When NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] contacted President Biden’s personal counsel on November 3, 2022, to arrange to pick up boxes from the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., they informed NARA that Mr. Moore had moved other boxes from the Penn Biden Center to Mr. Moore’s law firm in Boston,” the letter states.

In addition, the archives notified the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General on Nov. 4 that the documents had been moved. The documents were then picked up on Nov. 9 and were secured in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

The discovery comes just two months after federal authorities discovered classified documents at Biden’s Washington, D.C., think tank, as well as his Wilmington, Del., home.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Karine Jean-Pierre: ‘Because of the work that this president has done … it’s at historic lows’

Claim: The amount of fentanyl coming across the southern border is “at historic lows” thanks to Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

Who said it: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday, in response to a reporter’s question on Mexican drug cartels.

“Because of the work that this president has done, because of what we’ve done specifically on fentanyl at the border, it’s at historic lows,” Jean-Pierre said. “We’ve done it in a historic way.  That’s because of what this president has done.”

Why it matters: Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, has killed more Americans than the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined. In 2021 alone, more than 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, with the main culprit being fentanyl mixed with other drugs or chemicals, often without the user’s knowledge.

Provisional data from the CDC show that 100,500 Americans died from a drug overdose in the 12-month period from September 2021 to September 2022. Americans aged between 18 and 49 are more likely to die from fentanyl poisoning than any other cause of death.

The vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the country through the southern border, federal authorities believe. Rising overdoses have prompted calls for stricter border enforcement, with some Republicans saying the Biden administration is responsible for the health crisis.

Context: The Biden administration has overseen the largest border crisis in U.S. history. More than 5.5 million migrants have crossed the southern border since Biden took office. Last year, immigration authorities recorded more than 2 million migrant encounters on the southern border.

The border crisis has corresponded with a rapid rise in fentanyl overdoses. Border Patrol officials say the sheer number of people arriving at the southern border, whether to claim asylum or sneak past authorities, has left them ill equipped to stop smugglers.

During his State of the Union address, Biden called for higher penalties for fentanyl traffickers but stopped short of addressing a lack of border security as a cause for the large number of overdoses. Jean-Pierre said after the speech that the United States “has more work to do” on the issue.

Analysis: There is little truth to Jean-Pierre’s Tuesday claim that “fentanyl at the border” is “at historic lows.”

Customs and Border Protection figures show that authorities seized 12,500 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border from October 1, 2022 (the beginning of the 2023 fiscal year), through January 31, 2023. In the entire 2022 fiscal year, CBP seized 14,700 pounds of fentanyl, the most in the agency’s recorded history. The United States is on pace to break that record by the end of March, and perhaps already has.

Although the month of January saw a dramatic fall in fentanyl seizures—down to 1,400 pounds from December’s 6,200—it was still higher than any January on record. The month of December had the highest amount of fentanyl seized on the border than at any time in U.S. history. To put December’s numbers in perspective, in the 2020 fiscal year CBP seized a total of 4,800 pounds of fentanyl.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said it seized more than 379 million deadly doses of fentanyl at the end of last year, more than 1 for every person in the United States. DEA laboratory testing found that 60 percent of all fake prescription pills analyzed contained a lethal dose of fentanyl.

Jean-Pierre said later in her answer that “we are seizing fentanyl at record historic levels,” which is true. More fentanyl has been seized under Biden than under his predecessors, although these numbers still corresponded with record overdoses.

Moreover, fentanyl did not take such a hold on the U.S. drug market until recently. In 2016, 20,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid overdoses. Since then, fentanyl overdoses have been steadily increasing.

In short, fentanyl crossing the southern border is not at record lows. Fentanyl seizures, on the other hand, are at all-time highs under the Biden administration, but this fact has had virtually no impact on the nation’s drug crisis, indicating that massive amounts are still flowing across the border.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

McKinsey, which works with China, Russia, and corrupt South African authorities, dropped sponsorship over Linda Sarsour appearance

Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and a Biden State Department appointee spoke at Harvard University’s annual Arab conference, even after the conference lost its top corporate sponsor due to the participation of anti-Semitic activist Linda Sarsour.

Tlaib and State Department special adviser Sara Minkara participated in the event, which saw speakers call to “end U.S. support for Israel.” The pair appeared as others abandoned the conference—McKinsey & Company, the white-shoe consulting firm, pulled its sponsorship of the conference after discovering Sarsour “had a history of anti-Semitic comments,” it said in a statement. The company was also scheduled to hold a recruiting session, and some of its employees were slated to speak.

The annual Harvard gathering is the “largest pan-Arab conference in North America” and draws over 1,000 attendees to “discuss key issues with the region’s most prominent politicians, business people, and civil society leaders,” according to its website.

Panelists at the conference over the weekend expressed support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Jewish Insider reported. One speaker, American Muslims for Palestine director of development Mohamad Habehh, reportedly denounced Zionism as a “very stupid ideology” and called to “end U.S. support for Israel.”

Sarsour’s participation comes nearly a year after the insurance company Geico dropped the liberal activist as a diversity speaker due to her inflammatory comments. Sarsour, who has claimed Israel was “built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else” and praised Palestinian supermarket bomber Rasmea Odeh, in 2019 stepped down as a leader with the Women’s March following controversy over her statements. But Sarsour maintained ties with some anti-Israel left-wingers, working on Muslim outreach for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I., Vt.) presidential campaign and attending events with Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.).

McKinsey’s decision to distance itself from Sarsour is also notable, given its willingness to take on controversial clients. The firm has a history of work with China, Russia, corrupt South African authorities, corporate fraudsters, and the opioid industry. McKinsey is a regular sponsor of Harvard events, including a Latinx in Finance and Technology panel last October and the African Business Conference later this month.

“When we learned late last week that a speaker at an event our recruiting team was sponsoring at Harvard University had a history of anti-Semitic comments, we immediately stepped away from the conference, canceled our in-person recruiting meeting, and withdrew two speakers from the program,” said McKinsey in a statement. “We condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms and stand for inclusion and tolerance everywhere.”

Sarsour and the conference organizers did not respond to requests for comment. Tlaib did not respond to a request for comment.

Sarsour and Tlaib spoke about creating an “Arab MENA category on the 2030 national census” and “health access and policy,” according to an advertisement for the conference. Minkara, a Biden appointee serving as special adviser on international disability rights at the State Department, was also listed as a speaker at the event. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Other speakers included Lebanese TV host Ricardo Karam, who has called for a global boycott against Israel and accused the Jewish state of committing “apartheid against the Palestinian people,” and Egyptian actor Amr Waked, who has claimed that Israel has “expansionist, apartheid, and genocide preferences.”

Sarsour, a longtime anti-Israel activist, came to national prominence as one of the leaders of the 2017 Women’s March, protesting then-president Donald Trump’s election. She is a leading advocate for the BDS movement, spoke at a 2015 event for anti-Semitic Nation of Islam preacher Louis Farrakhan, and has defended cop-killer Assata Shakur.

Joe Biden disavowed Sarsour after she attended a Muslim outreach event for his 2020 campaign, with a spokesman saying Biden “obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS.”

Project Veritas released a new video today exposing a senior school administrator in Long Island, Dave Casamento, who admits to secretly indoctrinating young students with racial and gender politics.

The Assistant Superintendent of the East Meadow School District is recorded saying that for educators to get away with indoctrination, certain topics must be taught without the knowledge of parents.

Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:

• Dave Casamento, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, East Meadow School District: “Here’s the thing with DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] work — if you push too hard doing the work and you get this pushback, it will be decades before you can do the work again. So, it needs to be incremental.”
• Casamento: “Every district [in Nassau County] is doing it [DEI] covertly. Except for the black population.”
• Casamento: “They [parents] honestly believe that systemic racism does not exist. They don’t understand why we have to talk about LGBTQ issues. Or have books that have LGBTQ themes in them.”
• Casamento: “Politics is basically my job now. I am political in every conversation I have. I never thought I’d be at this point in my life. I am, and it is what it is. If you can do the game, you can do the good work.”
• Casamento: “My sexual identity was always a part of my work because I believe in making connections with kids.”
• Casamento: “So, the conservative movement will say — and I got to tell you, I am not opposed to this question: ‘Why do we need to sexualize kids at a young age?’ After the pandemic, we had an explosion of trans kids, and I’m like, ‘How could this be?’”

Casamento also said he tries to weed out potential conservative candidates who apply for a teaching position in his district.

“I think I said this before, but people don’t give up power, you have to take it from them…You stop hiring those types of people [conservatives]…We created a whole rubric for hiring in light of DEI,” he said.

“It’s all secret. So, I would rank them [conservatives] so low [in their interview process] that their score couldn’t possibly raise them up to the level of moving on to the cabinet.”

New York Assistant Superintendent ‘Covertly’ Pushing DEI Agenda Within School District; ‘Politics’ is ‘My Job Now’ … Claims His ‘Sexual Identity’ is Important to Make ‘Connections with Kids’; Reveals ‘Explosion’ of Trans Students in Wake of COVID Pandemic.

SOURCE: Project Veritas

A federal judge has dealt a major blow to the Biden administration‘s relaxed border policies.

Florida Judge T. Kent Wetherell ruled the Biden administration‘s use of policies to mass release migrants into the U.S. interior is unlawful and must be corrected immediately.

According to Fox News, Judge Wetherell stated in his opinion the Biden administration had “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country.”

Additionally, Wetherell ruled that the policies implemented by the Biden administration, including catch and release, had contributed to the degradation of the border as a means to keep illegal migrants out.

“Today’s ruling affirms what we have known all along, President Biden is responsible for the border crisis and his unlawful immigration policies make this country less safe. A federal judge is NOW ordering Biden to follow the law, and his administration should immediately begin securing the border to protect the American people,” Republican Florida Attorney General Moody said in a statement following the ruling.

The Biden administration had been increasingly relying on parole to release migrants quickly into the interior to reduce overcrowding at the border as it deals with historic migrant numbers at the border.

Biden has never been to the border. He went to El Paso, which is 800 miles from the Rio Grande Valley.

He brazenly lied and claimed that people weren’t crossing.

The City of El Paso cleared illegal aliens from the streets before the president arrived.

Pure political theater. pic.twitter.com/S4U1Tmvupg— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) March 8, 2023

However, the statute says agents should use parole sparingly on a “case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

Florida’s Attorney General Ashley Moody contended that President Biden is intentionally violating statutory mandates that migrants be detained. The administration had argued that there is no “non-detention policy.”

“The evidence establishes that Defendants have effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country by prioritizing “alternatives to detention” over actual detention and by releasing more than a million aliens into the country—on “parole” or pursuant to the exercise of “prosecutorial discretion” under a wholly inapplicable statute—without even initiating removal proceedings,” the judge said.

The ruling stays the order for seven days to allow for an appeal, but could potentially have massive implications if there is a surge in migrants when Title 42 ends.

Biden’s critics have accused the president of intentionally ignoring issues stemming from his border policies, forcing governors to address the federal government’s missteps.

On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a shift in policy to resettle asylum-seekers away from the Big Apple and into other cities across the country.

“There are cities in the state an across the country that … want to play the role,” the mayor said. “They realize that this is a national problem.”

According to POLITICO, Mayor Adams was reluctant to share which specific cities plan to host more migrants.

“Please don’t ask me which cities because I don’t need you running to the cities and stopping them,” he told reporters at the announcement. “I know you enjoy pitting cities against cities, so we are not giving you that information.”

Under the Biden administration, border officials have faced more than 1.7 million migrant encounters in FY 2021 and over 2.3 million in FY 2022.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

ANALYSIS – It isn’t news that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has proven to be vulnerable to political pressure. Just look at the threat assessments produced in 2020 that single out ‘white supremacists’ as the ‘most lethal domestic terror threat’ in the U.S., despite their numbers being minuscule.

According to that report, self-described ‘white supremacists’ were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks spread across more than a decade and a half – from 2000 to 2016.

Yes, that’s more murders than any other specific domestic extremist group, but let’s get real. 

There are more murders in Chicago in one weekend than the entire number of white supremacist killings nationwide in those sixteen years.

This DHS report, though produced under the last year of Trump’s term, like many others recently by different federal agencies, like the FBI, is part of a wider political campaign that conflates the relatively small number of white supremacists and other so-called right-wing extremists, with the tens of millions of mainstream conservatives and Trump supporters.

And we can now add traditional Catholics to the feds’ ‘most wanted’ list.

The FBI recently produced a memo by its Richmond, Virginia, field office that was leaked on Jan. 23, 2023.

That memo, according to a group of 20 GOP state attorney generals, “identifies ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]’ as potential ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.’”

In their letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Fox News reported the AGs told the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) to “desist from investigating and surveilling Americans who have done nothing more than exercise their natural and constitutional right to practice their religion in a manner of their choosing.” 

The AGs also asked that the DOJ and the FBI “reveal to the American public the extent to which they have engaged in such activities.”

The AGs’ letter notes that the FBI memorandum deploys “alarmingly detailed theological distinctions to distinguish between the Catholics whom the FBI deems acceptable, and those it does not.”

It’s in this context of politicized and weaponized federal law enforcement agencies that this latest report of DHS malfeasance deserves special attention.

Specifically, we are talking about the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA), whose leadership, according to Politico, was called “shady” and run “like a corrupt government.”

For years it has been operating a secretive domestic-intelligence gathering program that many DHS employees have complained may be illegal.

The OIA’s Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program allows DHS officials to bypass lawyers and seek intelligence interviews with individuals being held in local jails, federal prisons and immigrant detention centers.

While most law-abiding U.S. citizens may not care much about this DHS target group, remember this is just another example of how elements of DHS appear corrupt and play fast and loose with the law and all our civil liberties.

But the Department’s politicization is probably the biggest danger, according to documents obtained by Politico.

As the New York Post reports:

The ability of DHS to be impartial and withstand caving to political pressure was also a major concern, documents show.

An internal analysis during the Trump administration found a “significant number of respondents cited concerns with politicization of analytic products and/or the perceptions of undue influence that may compromise the integrity of the work performed by employees. This concern touches on analytic topics, the review process, and the appropriate safeguards in place to protect against undue influence.”

The document adds that “a number of respondents expressed concerns/challenges with the quality and effectiveness of I&A senior leadership” such as the “inability to resist political pressure.”

“The workforce has a general mistrust of leadership resulting from orders to conduct activities they perceive to be inappropriate, bureaucratic, or political,” the document continues.

It is clearly time to rein in rogue elements at DHS and FBI, but also to clean house at the top levels of both organizations and DOJ.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

State Department officials announced spokesman Ned Price will exit his role with the department later this month to pursue a new role.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken credited Price for being the “face and voice” of U.S. foreign policy throughout the Biden administration.

“For people in America and around the world, Ned Price has often been a face and voice of U.S. foreign policy,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “He’s performed with extraordinary professionalism and integrity. On behalf of the Department, I thank Ned for his remarkable service.”

Since day one as Spokesperson, Ned Price has been a voice for U.S. foreign policy, modeled transparency and integrity, and promoted press freedom around the world. Fortunate I’ll be able to continue to rely on him as trusted advisor in his new role. pic.twitter.com/cB0mTTwwNt— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) March 8, 2023

POLITICO reported that Price is exiting his role as spokesperson to begin a new role reporting directly to Sec. Blinken. An anonymous State Dept. official told POLITICO that Price will be taking a policy-focused role in Blinken‘s office but stopped short of revealing any details about said role.

NEWS: @NBCNews is first to report that @StateDeptSpox Ned Price – who restored daily briefings and press access on the Secretary’s travels – will leave the podium for a policy position reporting directly to @SecBlinken later this month.— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) March 7, 2023

Price previously worked as a CIA analyst and served as a spokesperson for the National Security Council during the Obama administration.

“I started as a public servant as an analyst at the CIA, and I ended up in this job because of a series of accidents, fateful accidents,” Price told NBC News. “I have loved being in this line of work for the past several years. And one of the things I love most about it is the connection to the policy.”

In his statement, Blinken thanked Price for bringing back the department’s daily press briefings, and praised Price for “giving journalists the chance to regularly ask tough questions of our policy.”

“Ned has helped the U.S. government defend and promote press freedom around the globe and modeled the transparency and openness we advocate for in other countries,” Blinken added. “His contributions will benefit the Department long after his service.”

🇺🇲 : Ned Price will step down as US State Department spokesperson this month.. pic.twitter.com/G3f0kMw1Cr— Truthseeker (@Xx17965797N) March 8, 2023

Vedant Patel, Price’s current deputy, will serve as his temporary replacement, the State Department official said.

This story is breaking news. Click refresh for the latest updates.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

A new report in The Washington Free Beacon outlines, in excruciating detail, how an ISIS terror attack that killed at least 183 people — including 13 U.S. service members — during the Biden administration‘s withdrawal from Afghanistan might’ve been prevented.

According to gripping testimony on Capitol Hill, given by one of the soldiers who was there.

Snipers positioned near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 26, 2021, had a window of opportunity to kill a suspected suicide bomber as he approached one of the crowded airport gates with an explosive belt.

Instead, they were not given the authority to take the shot that could’ve saved hundreds of lives.

Despite having plenty of intel and enough time to act.

Adam Kredo, of The Washington Free Beacon, has more:

Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps who was dispatched to Kabul during the Biden administration’s bungled evacuation, on Wednesday told lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee that his sniper team was stopped from taking out the suspected terrorist bomber. Vargas-Andrews also recounted how the Biden State Department turned Afghans away from the airport, “condemning them to death” at the Taliban’s hands. The Aug. 26 bombing left 13 U.S. military members dead and Vargas-Andrews severely wounded.

Vargas-Andrews’s sniper team was provided with detailed information about the suspected bomber, including what he looked like. “I asked the intel guys why he wasn’t apprehended sooner since we had a full description,” the military veteran testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee during its first public hearing on the bungled withdrawal operation. “I was told the asset could not be compromised.”

Soon after, Vargas-Andrews and his team spotted the bomber but were told to stand down by a commander in charge. “We reassured him of the ease of fire on the suicide bomber,” Vargas-Andrews said. “Pointedly, we asked him for engagement authority and permission. We asked him if we could shoot. Our battalion commander said, and I quote, ‘I don’t know.’”

“Plain and simple, we were ignored,” Vargas-Andrews testified. “Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety.” [emphasis added]

Soon afterward, the bomber detonated his explosive belt. The shockwave threw Vargas-Andrews 12 feet through the air. The power of the blast claimed two of his limbs and multiple internal organs.

So far, he’s had 44 surgeries.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

It’s no secret that relations between politicians and the press are particularly strained these days. It comes with the territory – the press and the powerful are supposed to have an adversarial relationship. The result, usually, is accountability – a definite public good.

But public good is not what will result if a bill introduced in the Florida Senate gets any traction. Quite the opposite. Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur‘s bill would violate basic First Amendment rights, punish small, independent reporters and protect the powerful, all at the same time. The bill would require bloggers who write about the state’s top officials – the governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet officials and, yes, state legislators to register with the state within five days of publishing such a piece.

And it gets worse. Additional posts, which is something any good blogger following a story will write, triggers additional reporting to the state:

…the blogger would…be required to submit monthly reports on the 10th of each month with the appropriate state office. They would not have to submit a report on months when no content is published.

For blog posts that “concern an elected member of the legislature” or “an officer of the executive branch,” monthly reports must disclose the amount of compensation received for the coverage, rounded to the nearest $10 value.

If compensation is paid for a series of posts or for a specific amount of time, the blogger would be required to disclose the total amount to be received, upon publication of the first post in said series or timeframe.

There are fines for refusing to do any of this, of course, which makes the entire thing even more obnoxious. Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich felt compelled to call out the craziness:

The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane. it is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately.

Yes, Sen. Brodeur should withdraw this bill. But if not, here’s all the license/registration/permission I need to write about him or any other Florida pol.

And in case the good Senator doesn’t understand that the Bill of Rights applies to the states, here’s the Florida version of the same right to a free and unfettered press.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Reducing its $9 trillion balance sheet will likely slow economy further

Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on March 7, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said he is prepared to accelerate interest rate hikes as economic growth and labor shortages continue to fuel inflation.

Meanwhile, the Fed is still sitting atop a massive $8.4 trillion portfolio of bonds it bought through economic stimulus programs. This portfolio now needs to be liquidated as the Fed shifts from stimulus to a more restrictive monetary policy to fight inflation.

“The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated,” Powell told Senators, signaling that the Fed may return to 50-basis-point rate hikes this year.

As of March 7, the Fed funds short-term rate was 4.57 percent.

Alongside the Fed’s interest rate actions is the hangover of its unprecedented bond-buying spree that started during the 2008 mortgage crisis and then accelerated during the covid pandemic.

The Fed’s balance sheet ballooned from less than $1 trillion in August 2008 to a record $9 trillion in April 2022.

This effort to prop up a reeling economy by buying bonds and injecting cash into the economy is called quantitative easing (QE).

When the Fed first engaged in QE in 2008, it was “one of the then-unconventional monetary policy tools the Fed employed in reaction to the Great Recession,” according to a Federal Reserve report.

“With its return during the pandemic, QE seems to have become a more routine part of the Fed’s crisis toolkit.”

The Fed engaged in quantitative easing as an experiment when its other tool to stimulate the economy, reducing short-term interest rates via the banking system, hit its limit; short-term rates in 2008 approached zero.

The central bank embarked on the bond-buying spree to try to drive down longer-term interest rates in bond markets as well.

Then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke quipped that “the problem with QE is it works in practice, but it doesn’t work in theory.” The Fed had reason to believe quantitative easing would stimulate the economy but economists disagreed on its magnitude.

Reversing Bond Buying

Now that policy goals have turned to fighting inflation, the Fed has shifted its bond purchase program into reverse.

As of February, the Fed has reduced its holdings to $8.4 trillion; it has been progressively shrinking them each month since September 2022 in a process known as quantitative tightening (QT).

Still, it has a long way to go as it has only unloaded 5 percent of what it acquired.

What this balance sheet reduction means is that there is a second dynamic at play, which has only just started and that will add to the interest rate hikes the Fed is conducting to cool down America’s economy.

Removing the Fed, which had been the dominant buyer of bonds in its stimulus days, from bond markets will reduce demand, driving bond prices down and pushing interest rates up.

How much and how fast this will slow economic growth remains uncertain for two reasons. First, the Fed has never had such a large accumulation of assets to unload; secondly, it is getting rid of them in a variable way.

Upon announcing the shift from QE to QT, Powell stated, “I would just stress how uncertain the effect is of shrinking the balance sheet.”

According to the Fed report, “There is still debate among economists over how and how well [QE] works. And when it comes to the reverse process of shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet, typically referred to as quantitative tightening [QT], economists know even less.”

Rather than simply sell off assets, the Fed has been allowing them to mature with caps on how much they will roll over, William Luther, director of the American Institute for Economic Research’s Sound Money Project, told The Epoch Times.

“What they’re doing is they have a cap of $60 billion in treasuries and $35 billion in mortgage-backed securities, and that is the most they will roll over in a given month,” Luther said. “So if there are $65 billion in treasuries that mature, they’re going to roll over $60 billion and reduce their asset holdings by $5 billion.”

‘Volatility For Bond Markets’

“Because it has this roll-off scheme when a lot of treasuries or mortgage-backed securities mature in that month, you get a big reduction in the balance sheet and correspondingly, a big reduction in the demand for those assets on the open market, because the Fed is a big player in these markets,” Luther said.

“So that’s a source of volatility for bond markets that we don’t usually have.”

At the same time, despite the Fed steadily increasing short-term rates, the real interest rates, calculated as interest rates minus inflation, just recently crossed into positive territory, meaning that they are above inflation.

According to the Fed, the real interest rate as of February is 1.58 percent.

This is some marginal good news for savers as, for the first time since 2009, with rare exceptions, they can earn a small positive return on their savings over what they lose to inflation. This has brought fixed-income investments back into vogue as investors once again see positive returns from low-risk securities like U.S. treasury bonds.

“It’s always tempting in situations like this to say, ‘Well there is this silver lining,’” Luther said. “But if it would have been possible to avoid this inflation fiasco and the higher interest rates that bringing down inflation requires, certainly we would have preferred that.

“We’re worse off as Americans, on average, having gone through this high inflation and disinflation period than we would have been if inflation had just been stable and predictable.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Fishermen question apparent contradictions between whale conservation, offshore wind proponents

SWAN’S ISLAND, Maine—For more than 200 years, the Joyce family has weathered storms, the troughs and crests of the economy, and the inherent danger of working on the ocean to draw its living from the sea.

They wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve always been immersed in this,” eighth-generation lobsterman Jason Joyce told The Epoch Times.

But after a lifetime of contending with nature, the lobstermen say they face new adversaries who threaten to end their way of life. Offshore wind corporations, with the backing of the federal government, plan to anchor towering windmills in the waters where they fish.

The wind corporations have, for years, funded environmental groups, which, in turn, have accused the lobstermen of endangering the North Atlantic right whale.

“They’ve been after us for 25 years now,” Galen “Sput” Staples, Joyce’s neighbor and a fellow lobsterman, told The Epoch Times.

Swan’s Island is roughly 80 square miles of hilly, forested land with a small harbor, picturesque homes, and an automated lighthouse.

Situated about six miles off the coast, the island is only accessible by ferry. The only hotel is the Harbor Watch Inn. The management advises customers to pick up groceries before catching the ferry, as there are no restaurants on the island.

Joyce and his fellow lobstermen gather in the Swan’s Island Fishermens Co-op most mornings for bad coffee and good talk.

Most learned their trade from their fathers and grandfathers; all have stories of setting their first traps as boys.

They grew up in the business working as “stern men” on their family’s boats until they could purchase their own. Some fish full-time, and some work side jobs. None of the lobstermen in the co-op can fathom doing anything else.

By law, Maine lobstermen are owner–operators. No corporate factory boats are fishing for Maine lobsters. Instead, the lobsters are caught by small craft, usually crewed by fewer than five people. That promotes conservation because a small operator is less likely to cut corners and risk his entire business, Joyce said.

But it also makes them easy targets for corporate interests who want to control the sea.

“We’re the little guy. We can’t fight back,” Staples said.

The lobstermen’s main tools have changed little since James Joyce dropped his traps in 1806. James would likely be able to captain Jason’s boat after just a little training. Today’s lobstermen use a trap, a buoy, and a line to connect the two, just as their ancestors did. This assembly is called a “haul.”

The lobsterman baits the trap and drops it to the bottom of the sea. The buoy marks the trap’s location and identifies who set it. The line connecting the buoy to the trap enables the lobsterman to retrieve the trap. And that line is the crux of the accusation by the environmental groups.

A host of wildlife conservation and environmental groups, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Marine Fisheries Service, are calling to eliminate those lines to protect the North Atlantic right whale.

The NOAA claims that a significant factor in whale mortality is human encounters. According to the agency, the whales become tangled in the lobster trap lines, hindering movement and causing injuries that can lead to death.

The NOAA website reports that 97 right whales have had dangerous and sometimes lethal encounters with humans since 2017.

Of that number, 36 were killed, 22 were severely injured, and 38 received survivable injuries. Government agencies and environmental groups responded by springing into action.

Of the 36 deaths documented by NOAA, only nine involved entanglements. And of those, not a single one was linked to Maine lobster gear.

Environmental and animal rights groups have mounted campaigns to save the right whale that have generally portrayed the seafood industry and the lobstermen as hostile to it. As a result, in November 2022, Whole Foods decided to stop selling Maine lobster in its stores.

The grocery chain stated that it made the decision based on information from California-based Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch and the London-based Marine Stewardship Council.

Both groups claimed that the method of fishing for lobster is unsustainable and endangers whales.

The National Marine Fisheries Service began issuing regulations to save the whales.

Lobstermen were required to use nonfloating lines on their traps to reduce the chance of entanglement. If a buoy becomes separated from a line, the line will sink to the bottom, reducing the possibility that a whale or some other animal will become entangled.

It also virtually ensures the lobsterman will lose that trap.

Lobstermen are also required to use “weak links” in their lines. These are sections designed to separate if too much pressure is placed on them. The idea is for a whale to be able to pull itself free if it becomes entangled.

Then, the government wrote rules requiring all lobstermen to increase the number of traps on each haul. The logic behind this rule is that more traps on each line mean fewer lines in the water.

These rules are part of a 10-year plan to require lobstermen to reduce the risk to whales by 98 percent by 2024.

According to the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, its members have done their best to comply with the rules because they want to be good stewards of the environment; however, they say a 98 percent reduction is an impossible goal.

The association sued to block the government’s plan but lost its lawsuit.

Maine’s U.S. congressional delegation inserted a provision into the 2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill that delays the rule until December 2028 and recently a move has been made to repeal that section of the bill.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the ranking Democratic member and former chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, on Feb. 27 introduced the “Restoring Effective Science-based Conservation Under Environmental Laws Protecting Whales Act of 2023,” or the “RESCUE Whales Act.”

A spokesman from Grijalva’s office said there’s no need for the delay in enforcing the 98 percent reduction requirement, since the omnibus bill also provides funding to assist lobstermen in transitioning to new, ropeless fishing gear.

“We want to continue to incentivize the deployment of this technology and get it in the water as quickly as possible, which is why Rep. Grijalva championed the passage of $20 million in funding in the FY 2023 omnibus to help transition the lobster fishing industry to ropeless gear,” Jason Johnson, Grijalva’s communications director, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

However, the lobstermen say that ropeless technology hasn’t been widely tested and is very expensive.

Joyce said Grijalva should probably be focused on issues closer to home.

“Why don’t you introduce a bill to assist the enforcement needs of Cochise County [Arizona] Sheriff Mark Dannels in managing your border and leave Maine Lobstermen alone as we continue to maintain a perfect record of zero right whale deaths ever, and zero entanglements since 2004,” Joyce wrote in response to Johnson’s email.

Joyce and his fellow lobstermen don’t dispute NOAA’s whale numbers, but they say those numbers don’t tell the whole story. The lobstermen claim that the government ignores scientific evidence that right whale migration patterns have changed and the whales are moving further away from Maine.

“Simply put—the federal government is wrongly holding Maine lobstermen accountable for the decline of the right whale population,” the Maine Lobstermen’s Association website reads. “Its plan will end the Maine lobster fishery but won’t save right whales.”

Amid all this, the offshore wind lobby has entered the fray.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, has voiced support for her state’s lobster industry. But she also plans for Maine to get 100 percent of its electricity from “green” energy sources by 2040. A major element of her plan is offshore wind.

The Biden administration is also pushing ahead with its plan to promote offshore wind, and the Gulf of Maine, where the lobstermen of Swan’s Island live and work, is part of that plan, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

In August 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced a “request for interest” to assess interest in the development of commercial wind energy leases within a 13.7-million-acre area in the Gulf of Maine, according to the Department of the Interior. It has already invested $80 million to collect baseline information in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine.

The lobstermen say windmills would ruin their fishing grounds, decimate their industry, and pose a more significant hazard to whales.

However, Mills says that the two can coexist.

Developments further down the Eastern Seaboard are raising questions about the effect that windmills would have on the ocean and sea life even before the first windmills are operational.

Since December 2022, at least 25 whales have turned up dead on beaches in New York and New Jersey. Whales also have washed ashore in Maryland and Virginia.

Some say the deaths have coincided with seismic surveys for offshore windmill construction; there is concern that sound from the testing interferes with whales’ ability to navigate and may damage their ears.

Three congressmen and more than a dozen mayors whose coastal districts are near offshore wind energy sites are calling for a moratorium on new Atlantic Coast projects until a thorough investigation into a recent spate of whale deaths can rule out wind farm activity as the cause.

The NOAA and pro-offshore wind factions say there’s no evidence of any connection between testing for offshore wind development and whale deaths. However, that’s not to say there’s no effect at all.

During a media teleconference on Jan. 18, representatives from the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management took questions from reporters about whale deaths and the offshore wind work.

One of the speakers acknowledged that the testing might have some effect, although he said it wasn’t connected to mortality.

“I think the way we’ve been describing it … it has the potential to have a behavioral influence,” said Brian Hooker, biology team lead with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Office of Renewable Energy Programs. “And that’s what’s the very effect that we anticipate could occur.”

Benjamin Laws, deputy chief for the permits and conservation division for NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, was quick to interject.

“Well, I just want to be unambiguous, there is no information that would support any suggestion that any of the equipment that’s being used in support of wind development for these site characterization surveys could directly lead to the death of a whale,” Laws said.

Environmentalists have raised concerns about seismic testing in the oil industry for years. But seismic equipment used by offshore wind interests differs from that in the oil industry, according to Erica Staaterman of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Center for Marine Acoustics.

Offshore wind equipment is smaller, quieter, and more focused than that used by oil and gas, she said.

“So, for example, many of them are used for very short periods of time with a long quiet time in between. So that means that they’re only on for several milliseconds, and then for about 15 seconds, it would be quiet,” Staaterman told reporters.

Scientists are investigating the recent whale deaths and will continue doing so, NOAA spokesperson Lauren Gaches said in a statement to The Epoch Times. She said there’s no conclusive evidence that seismic surveys caused any deaths.

“Strandings and inconclusive necropsies have occurred long before offshore wind was a factor, so correlating the two now is not based in science,” Gaches wrote. “Necropsies can take weeks to months to complete the tissue sample analyses, so that work remains underway.”

Joyce noted that many environmental groups that have been critical of lobster traps are silent regarding surveying. Some have even voiced support, saying that offshore wind development is necessary to counteract climate change.

He’s curious how a temporary line from a lobster trap is a hazard to whales, while permanent underwater cables, pilings, and related infrastructure for hundreds of offshore windmills aren’t an issue.

According to a report by the “Save Right Whales Coalition,” there may be more than climate change concerns behind the environmentalists’ position.

The group is a coalition of people along the East Coast who are concerned about offshore wind development’s impact on the ocean and their coastal communities. The group published its report, “Conflicts of Interest: Environmental Organizations Take Offshore Wind Industry Money,” on its webpage.

“A recent investigation found many conservation groups accept millions of dollars in donations from the offshore wind industry,” the group wrote.

Danish wind energy company Orsted Global donated $500,000 to U.S.-based nonprofit Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in 2018, according to the latter’s website.

The following November, the institute announced that it was “excited to use Department of Energy funds to make offshore wind more sustainable.”

Orsted, along with energy company Eversource, donated $1.25 million to Mystic Aquarium, a marine aquarium in Connecticut, according to Eversource’s website. Eversource serves customers in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

Mystic Aquarium reportedly used the funds to build a state-of-the-art exhibit and finance media projects promoting wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources.

“In November 2021, the aquarium developed a video titled ‘The Promise of Offshore Wind,’ with Orsted listed as a ‘supporter’ in the credits,” the report reads.

Federal Agencies Involved

In 1984, the federal government founded the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as a 501(c)(3) corporation to connect public projects with private financing to preserve wildlife and habitat.

In 2019 and 2020, energy company Avangrid Renewables gave between $100,000 and$499,999 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the report states.

According to a statement on its website, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation entered an agreement in 2021 with U.S.-based wind company Apex Clean Energy. Under the agreement, Apex would donate to the foundation $1,000 per megawatt of generating capacity that Apex commercializes, and the foundation would match the donation dollar-for-dollar to finance grants.

On its website, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation includes a link to a program to protect whales from entanglement in fishing gear but makes no mention of possible threats from the offshore wind industry, according to the report.

‘You Guys Aren’t Concerned About Whales at All’

While the local activists may be motivated by good intentions, Sawyer Spencer—a lifelong lobsterman and a regular at the co-op—doubts the motivations of the moneyed interests. He told the co-op gathering that his view was summed up by a fisherman he saw quoted on a local news broadcast.

“He said, ‘You guys aren’t concerned about the whales at all,’” Sawyer said.

Samuel Joy is a 30-something island native and the son of a minister who has spent his life lobstering.

One cold February morning, Joy built new lobster traps in front of a wood-burning stove as his 4-year-old son Elias played with building blocks, and Joyce, his father-in-law, watched from a chair near the stove.

Joy is an amiable, friendly man with dark hair and a calm demeanor. Like the other lobstermen who spoke with The Epoch Times, he said he’s all for conserving whales and wants to preserve the environment. He also wants to maintain the life and work that he loves.

“I’ve been fishing every summer since I was 5 years old. I want to give [Elias] as much opportunity as I had when I was a kid,” he said.

Joy says that he’s cautiously optimistic and is quick to answer when asked if he would recommend that a young man consider lobstering as a vocation.

“Just fish until they make you stop,” he said.

Sawyer said the negative effect of implementing the whale regulations and establishing offshore wind farms would extend beyond just displacing the lobstermen. Considering the ancillary jobs connected to lobstering, the economic impact could devastate the coastal communities and beyond.

“The whole state of Maine is going to be displaced,” Sawyer said. “What we’re doing is trying to survive.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Statements made by Dr. Anthony Fauci under oath aren’t credible because of evidence that contradicts him, lawyers told a court in a new filing.

That includes the claim that Fauci didn’t think he had ever met with Dr. Ralph Baric, an American virologist who helped perform risky research on bat coronaviruses in China.

“I know who he is. I doubt if I’ve ever met him,” Fauci said during the late 2022 deposition—the first time he answered questions under oath since the pandemic began.

Fauci acknowledged the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he headed until around the New Year, provided funding for Baric.

“But you don’t remember ever meeting him in person?” he was asked.

“I don’t recall. I could have met him. I run into several thousands of scientists that we refer to, but I don’t recall, certainly, having a relationship with him,” Fauci responded.

But Fauci’s official calendar lists a one-on-one meeting with Baric on Feb. 11, 2020. And a newly revealed message from a professor who recounted Baric’s account of the meeting showed they talked about man-made virus combinations.

“I talked to Ralph for a long time last night. He sounds beat,” Matt Frieman, a University of Maryland professor, wrote in a Feb. 18, 2020, message. “He said he sat in Fauci’s office talking about the outbreak and chimeras.”

A chimera is a combination of viruses.

The materials, unearthed from Freedom of Information Act requests from the nonprofits OpentheBooks.com, Judicial Watch, and U.S. Right to Know, and other evidence, including a 2020 email of talking points for Fauci that mentioned Baric being “on our team,” show that “Dr. Fauci’s testimony on this point is not credible,” the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana told a federal court in the new filing.

Fauci also claimed that he was not “100 percent certain” of the name of Dr. Shi Zhengli, known for her experiments on bat viruses in China. “I get sometimes confused with Asian names,” Fauci testified.

“Yet Dr. Shi Zhengli, the so-called ‘bat woman,’ is world-renowned as the researcher who may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been so since the beginning of the pandemic, and the name ‘Shi’ is included in the title of the article that Dr. Fauci forwarded to Dr. Hugh Auchincloss after midnight on February 1, 2020. Dr. Fauci’s testimony is not credible on this point,” Andrew Bailey and Jeff Landry, the attorneys general, wrote.

Fauci also repeatedly said in the deposition that he could not recall details about a secret phone call, held after he and deputies discussed how the NIAID had funded coronavirus experiments in Wuhan, China, where the first COVID-19 cases were detected. Shortly after the existence of the call became public, though, Fauci told USA Today, “I remember it very well.”

“Dr. Fauci’s testimony about lack of recall is not credible,” the lawyers said.

They also noted that when Fauci did characterize the call, he said that it involved a “good faith discussion back and forth between people who knew each other” and that “the general feeling among the participants on the call is that they wanted to get down to the truth and not wild speculation about things.” After the call, a number of participants wrote papers decrying the theory that COVID-19 started in a lab.

“Dr. Fauci thus seeks to have his cake and eat it too—he claims both to remember little or nothing of what was said on the call, and to clearly remember that the entire discussion was done in good faith and without any bias,” the attorneys general said. “In any event, subsequent communications and events make clear that Dr. Fauci’s testimony on this point is not credible.”

The filing was issued to U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who is overseeing a lawsuit brought against the federal government for its censorship campaign with Big Tech firms.

The lawyers are asking Doughty to block the government from violating the First Amendment rights of Americans.

Fauci, who stepped down from his government positions around the New Year, could not be reached for comment.

CNN, while interviewing Fauci on Tuesday, played a clip of a 2021 clash between Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Fauci, in which Paul noted that the U.S. government has funded risky research in China and named both Baric and Zhengli. Paul has described Fauci as a liar who should be charged with perjury, while Fauci has said that Paul is wrong.

In an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, Paul said Fauci has “orchestrated a cover-up,” referring in part to a newly disclosed message that indicates Fauci “prompted” the drafting of a paper that said COVID-19 couldn’t have come from a lab.

Fauci said in the new interview that he has been honest.

“The most important thing we’ve got to do is stick with data, stick with science, be transparent and be honest, which I have been very much so literally for the entire 50 years that I’ve been at the NIH and the 38 years that I directed the institute,” he said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday blasted the Jan. 6 committee in light of newly released surveillance video of the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Besides misleading the public, they withheld evidence for partisan political reasons that sent people to prison for far more serious crimes than they committed,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, referring to the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

“That is deeply wrong, legally and morally,” Musk said.

Musk, an avid Twitter user with 130 million followers, wrote in response to a part of the footage that was aired on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, which were released to the Fox News host by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). It adds to the world’s richest person’s ongoing criticisms of the federal government under the Biden administration, which included disapproving of his “Build Back Better” agenda and calling the Democratic Party the party of “hatred.”

Among the most high-profile revelation in these tapes was a clip showing Capitol Police officers walking alongside Jacob Chansley, a Jan. 6 defendant serving a 41-month sentence after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge. Chansley was unarmed and walked past several Capitol police officers.

“This is crazy. The public was misled,” Musk wrote in another post, replying to footage showing Chansley walking beside police officers in the building.

In his Monday program, Carlson said lawmakers were “lying” about the events of Jan. 6, which he said were less violent than they actually are. He noted how the tape shows Chansley to be walking around the Capitol without being arrested and later questioned the narrative that officer Sicknick died of a head injury.

“This tape overturns the single most powerful and politically useful lie that Democrats told us about January 6th,” Carlson said Monday.

The Select Jan. 6 committee, which consists of two Republicans and seven Democrats, was established in the House of Representatives on July 1, 2021. It interviewed a thousand people, including former officials of the Trump administration, in investigating what it describes as an “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, when protesters protested in and around the Capitol building in objection to the result of the 2020 presidential election.

Members of the committee had characterized the protesters as “dangerous extremists” and “violent mobs” mobilized by former President Donald Trump. The committee dissolved in January 2023.

‘Exculpatory Evidence’

Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, a legal non-profit, told The Epoch Times that he believes the tapes constitute “exculpatory evidence” in the case of Jacob Chansley.

“It shows that he wasn’t a violent threat,” Davis, a former clerk under Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, said of Chansley.”At best, he should have been charged with trespassing—at best 30 days in jail. 41 months? For what?”

“I think a reasonable juror would think that he thought he could be there when the police are walking him around and not telling him to leave,” Davis added. “Even a ninety-five percent Democrat DC jury would not have found Jacob Chansley guilty if they watched that video.”

Furthermore, Davis was critical of how these tapes were not released to the Jan. 6 protestors’ defense attorneys; instead, the attorneys had to go to the Capitol in Washington to watch the tapes.

“The Supreme Court in 1963 held in Brady v. Maryland that prosecutors must make available exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. The issue here is whether they made this clearly exculpatory tape that we saw on Tucker Carlson last night available to Jacob Chansley and his attorney before [Chansley] pled guilty in August of 2021,” Davis said.

“The bottom line is, no defense attorney can go sit in a room for 41,000 hours during a 40-hour work week,” Davis said. “It would take 20 years.”

This disparity in what was reasonably achievable and the requirements of Brady, Davis said, show that the prosecutions of the protesters are corrupt.

“It shows this whole process was corrupt. It violated Brady, under the U.S. Constitution. Judge Royce Lamberth should issue a show-cause order today to ask, ‘why I should not find a Brady violation against these prosecutors,’ and ‘why I should not reverse the conviction and dismiss the complaint against Jacob Chansley.’”

Reactions to Tape Release

Political figures have had mixed responses to McCarthy’s decision to release the tapes.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) backed statements from Capitol police that said the depiction of the Jan. 6 events on Fox was “false” and “outrageous.” McConnell referred to a letter from Mange, who said Capitol police officers used “de-escalation tactics” on Jan. 6 and that Fox’s program “cherry-picked from the calmer moments” of the surveillance tapes to depict the events as more calm than they were.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)  alleged that Carlson “manipulated” his viewers in his program and called on Fox News to stop releasing the Capitol breach tapes.

Despite the critical comments by some Washington politicians, others were supportive of Carlson’s airing of the Capitol breach tapes.

“Truth is beginning to be revealed. Thank you [Speaker McCarthy], [Tucker Carlson] & company for showing America the rest of the Jan. 6 story,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote in a Twitter post on March 7. “When will judges begin applying justice equally? Doesn’t look like ‘thousands of armed insurrectionists’ to me.”

Former President Donald Trump praised Carlson’s reporting and said the tapes show the Select Jan. 6 Committee are “criminal fabricators.”

“Congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in U.S. history. The New Surveillance Footage of the January 6th Events sheds an entirely different light on what actually happened. The Unselect Committee was a giant SCAM, and has now unequivocally been stamped as CRIMINAL FABRICATORS OF THIS MOST IMPORTANT DAY,” Trump wrote in a March 7 post on Truth Social, his social media platform.

“Pelosi & McConnell failed on security. The Police story is sad and difficult to watch. ‘Trump’ and most others are totally innocent, LET THEM GO FREE, NOW!” He said, referring to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Meanwhile, McCarthy said that the tapes “belong to the American public.”

“I promised,” McCarthy told the New York Times in an interview. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”

Numerous people awaiting criminal trials related to Jan. 6 charges have requested trial delays in light of the newly emerged videos.

Meanwhile, Carlson said Monday that he would show more footage of the Capitol breach on Tuesday, including an interview with a Capitol police officer who was present in the Capitol.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

As people worldwide are awakening to growing threats to freedom of speech, citizens of a communist country like China are already living the nightmare of totalitarian state control.

In China, it amounts to risking one’s life to express any views that don’t follow the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) narrative. Something as simple as revealing your religious beliefs on social media, if your religious affiliation is not officially acknowledged by the CCP, can result in your being put under surveillance or even arrested.

In March 2022, China’s new measures to monitor online religious content came into force following Xi’s “complaints” that the internet is being used to “advertise” faith and that social networking sites are becoming tools of “religious propaganda,” according to Bitter Winter.

Since the release of the draft of the new measures in 2018, chat rooms and several internet platforms have already been reportedly receiving “warnings about using sensitive words such as ‘Amen’ and ‘Jesus,’” reported ChinaAid.

Here are some accounts of what happened when Falun Gong adherents and Christians were persecuted for sharing “sensitive information” online.

Teacher Sentenced to 8 Years

Sun Wanshuai, an art teacher in his 50s living in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, was sentenced to 8 years in July 2022 with a 30,000 yuan fine (approx. $4,350) for posting “sensitive information” about Falun Gong on WeChat, a popular Facebook-like social media platform in China, reported Minghui.org. The internet police arrested him and confiscated his computer and cell phone.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient meditation discipline based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, forbearance. Falun Gong is freely practiced in over 100 countries but has been persecuted in China since July 20, 1999; countless adherents have been arrested and killed in the past 23 years.

Christian Preacher Arrested for His Evangelism

On March 5, 2022, Chen Wensheng, a Christian street preacher from Hengyang City, Hunan province, was arrested after he posted a message on social media asking people to participate in a ministry for ethnic minority groups in China, reported Persecution.org.

By 11:02 a.m. on the same day, he was taken away by the Hunan police. Chen has previously been arrested multiple times for evangelism.

Catholic Apps and Websites Shutdown

On Sept. 1, 2022, China’s first Catholic app, CathAssist, announced the “termination of operations” of both its website and app, according to ChinaAid.

CathAssist’s operation team said that they “made various efforts to apply for an Internet Religious Information Service License” since the implementation of the new law but they did not meet the CCP’s requirements as the “government officials demanded significant reduction in functionality and content,” according to the report.

An Ex-Police Officer and a Deputy Director Sentenced

Falun Gong adherent Zhang Xia, a former police officer from Shanghai, was arrested in February 2021 for posting information about Falun Gong on social media, reported Minghui.org. The 53-year-old woman was charged with “promoting a cult with a communications network,” sentenced to 9 years, and fined 30,000 yuan (approx. $4,350) in June 2022.

Huang Daimiao, former deputy director of the Business and Tourism Department at a vocational college in Yichang City, Hubei Province, was sentenced to 4 years and fined 10,000 yuan (approx. US$1,450) in July 2018 for sending videos about the persecution of Falun Gong on WeChat.

Ban on Publishing Live Christian Broadcasts

According to ChinaAid, on Jan. 29, 2021, the Three-Self Patriotic Association and Christian Association of Qingdao City, Shandong Province, published a notice on “Restrictions on Churches in China’s Shandong Province: A ban on live broadcasts as well as releases of preaching audios and videos.”

Two days previously, Christians in the province were also prohibited from broadcasting religious activities via the internet, according to the report.

Online Church Service Terminated

ChinaAid also reported that on July 11, 2022, police raided the Shenzhen Trinity Harvest Gospel Church during their online service. Officers of national security, police, and the Religious Affairs Bureau “broke into the rooms” while Pastor Mao Zhibin and Elder Chu Yanqing were hosting the service via Zoom.

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The Church’s online service was “forcibly terminated,” the report said.

A Business Professor Sentenced

Zeng Hao, a business professor in his 40s at Tianhe College of Guangdong Polytechnical Normal University, was arrested in August 2017 for sharing information about the persecution of Falun Gong on the Tencent QQ platform, a popular Chinese instant messaging service and web portal, between October 2014 and January 2017, Minghui.org reported. After a period of monitoring, the police arrested him. Zeng was later sentenced to 3.5 years and fined 10,000 yuan in January 2019.

Another Falun Gong adherent from Heilongjiang Province was also sentenced for posting on the Tencent QQ platform. Wang Xin, a man in his 40s, was arrested by Shanghai police officers in August 2016 after he posted a photo related to Falun Gong on social media, according to Minghui.org. He was sentenced to 8 months and fined 3,000 yuan (approx. $450).

Arrested for Sharing an Audio File Exposing Persecution

According to Minghui.org, Che Guoping, an employee of Huaneng Power Company in Dezhou City, Shandong Province, was arrested by over ten police officers in May 2017 while on her way home from work. Che had earlier shared an audio file online containing information about the persecution of Falun Gong.

The police ransacked her home and took away her cell phones, iPad, and personal belongings. She was later sentenced to 3.5 years and fined 5,000 yuan (approx. $960).

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Just what we need…fake mass vaccination that does more harm than good. After all, chickens contribute a huge amount to climate change, right? [US Patriot]

The Biden administration is considering the mass vaccination of the poultry population in response to an ongoing outbreak of avian flu that has killed off millions of birds and has helped spike egg and poultry costs.

There are some existing vaccines for farm birds, but U.S. Agriculture Department spokesman Mike Stepien told The New York Times that no vaccination effort has been authorized and the department is unsure if the existing vaccines will be effective against the current strain of H5N1 bird flu. Erica Spackman, a researcher for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, told the newspaper that scientists are researching new vaccine candidates to help curb the ongoing bird flu outbreak.

Thus far, the Biden administration has made no decision to impose a poultry vaccine mandate.

“There are a range of options the United States regularly considers when there is any outbreak that could affect the security and safety of the United States’ food supply,” the White House National Security Council told news outlets on Monday. “Right now, we are focused on promoting and enhancing high-impact biosafety practices and procedures.”

Instead of a bird flu vaccine program, many farmers have instead been culling millions of their livestock. At least 52.3 million birds were killed off throughout the United States in 2022.

“The Department of Agriculture continues to respond quickly whenever the virus is detected among bird populations,” the National Security Council said on Monday.

Bird Flu Risks

Bird flu can be deadly. An 11-year-old girl in Cambodia died last month after becoming infected with H5N1.

Bird flu can spread to humans through direct contact between a person and a farm bird or between a person and a contaminated surface. Bird flu contaminants can also spread through droplets or dust particles that a farm bird could kick up when it flaps its wings.

For now, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention assesses that the risk of H5N1 spreading to humans remains low. That said, disease researchers have heightened concerns over growing numbers of infections among wild birds and some mammal species and the possibility the virus could evolve to spread more easily between people.

Vaccine Program Would Have Trade-Offs

Vaccinating millions of farm birds could be a complicated endeavor, and while a vaccine program may be able to slow or prevent the spread of the bird flu, it could also trigger trade bans.

“We don’t have any assurance that any of our trading partners would accept our products if we began vaccinating any birds,” Julie Gauthier, the USDA veterinary service’s assistant director for poultry health, told Lancaster Farming in October.

While a vaccine program might help farmers to prevent disease outbreaks and preserve more of their livestock and poultry products, the costs of the program might outweigh the international trade regulations a vaccine program could trigger.

The United States is the world’s largest producer of poultry meat, accounting for about 17 percent of the global output, according to United Nations data.

The United States exported an average of $4.4 billion worth of poultry meat annually between 2017 and 2021.

Other countries are also considering a new poultry vaccine program to counteract the H5N1 bird flu.

Professor Ian Brown, who is advising the United Kingdom government’s response to the bird flu, recently told the newspaper i that the UK is also considering a new vaccine program. Brown said such a vaccination program “represents quite a big change, because vaccination is prohibited in the U.K. in poultry.”

“So it has to be carefully balanced, but obviously with the changing risk, looking at vaccination as one component of a control program is obviously prudent,” Brown added.

The European Union already has a poultry vaccine ready to respond to H5N1. The European Commission announced animals and goods can flow between businesses and zones where vaccinations have taken place, beginning on March 12.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Missouri law that would have penalized police for enforcing federal gun laws was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge Tuesday, handing a win to the Biden administration Department of Justice that filed suit against the law last year.

The DOJ alleged the law was undermining federal drug and weapons investigators by placing heavy fines of up to $50,000 on police departments if they “infringed” on Missourians’ Second Amendment rights by following any federal laws.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA) was ruled “invalid, null, void and of no effect” by U.S. District Court Judge Brian Wimes, an Obama appointee.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a statement on social media he plans to appeal the court’s ruling at the Eighth Circuit Court and expects a “better result” there.

“As Attorney General, I will protect the Constitution, which includes defending Missourians’ fundamental right to bear arms,” he said in a Twitter thread. “If the state legislature wants to expand upon the foundational rights codified in the Second Amendment, they have the authority to do that. But SAPA is also about the Tenth Amendment. It’s about federalism and individual liberty, so we will be appealing the court’s ruling.”

Second Amendment Preservation Act

Signed into law by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson in June 2021, the law declares invalid all federal laws infringing on the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Missouri Constitution.

The act defined infringements as “certain taxes, certain registration and tracking laws, certain prohibitions on the possession, ownership, use, or transfer of a specific type of firearm, and confiscation orders.”

The act declared “that federal supremacy does not apply to federal laws that restrict or prohibit the manufacture, ownership, and use of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition within the state because such laws exceed the scope of the federal government’s authority.”

It further imposed the duty of protecting the rights of “law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms” in the hands of courts and law enforcement agencies in the state.

“Under this act, no public officer or state or local employee has the authority to enforce firearms laws declared invalid by the act. However, state employees may accept aid from federal officials in an effort to enforce Missouri laws. Sovereign immunity shall not be an affirmative defense under this act.”

The fine for a public officer or state or local employee who attempted to enforce the law deemed invalid by the act became subject to a penalty of “$50,000 per employee hired by the law enforcement agency.”

The act did not make it a violation to aid federal officials in pursuit of a suspect in certain cases, including felony crimes involving weapons violations and controlled substance violations.

Challenged by DOJ

In its suit against the state’s law, the DOJ argued the Act violated the U.S. Constitution by ignoring federal supremacy as the act stated. On top of seeking the act be nullified, the DOJ sought a declaration that state and local officials may participate in federal task forces or investigations without fear of penalty.

In 2022, the DOJ filed a lawsuit arguing Missouri’s law has undermined federal drug and weapons investigations.

“The United States’ law enforcement operations have been affected through withdrawals from and/or limitations on cooperation in joint federal-state task forces, restrictions on sharing information, confusion about the validity of federal law in light of SAPA, and discrimination against federal employees and those deputized for federal law enforcement who lawfully enforce federal law,” court documents claimed.

A federal agent in charge of the Kansas City Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) claimed in an affidavit submitted to the court in a separate lawsuit that a dozen state and local officers withdrew from participating in ATF task forces at least in part because of the law, according to The Missouri Independent.

Wimes said in the ruling that federal law cannot be nullified by any state law and that Missouri legislators are aware of that.

“SAPA’s practical effects are counterintuitive to its stated purpose,” Wimes wrote. “While purporting to protect citizens, SAPA exposes citizens to greater harm by interfering with the Federal Government’s ability to enforce lawfully enacted firearms regulations designed by Congress for the purpose of protecting citizens within the limits of the Constitution.”

Wimes added state and local law enforcement officials in the state may join federal task forces, assist in the investigation and enforcement of federal firearm crimes, and fully share information with the federal government without fear of penalty.

“The States of Missouri and its officers, agents, and employees and any others in active concert with such individuals are prohibited from any and all implementation and enforcement of H.B. 85.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Says European investigations must conclude before conclusions are drawn and ‘follow-on actions’ potentially taken

The New York Times has reported that U.S. intelligence sources believe the September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage may have been the work of a pro-Ukrainian group made up of Russian or Ukrainian nationals. Yet on March 7, a spokesman for the National Security Council (NSC) offered guarded answers to questions about the reports.

The NSC’s John Kirby said Germany, Sweden, and Denmark are still investigating the causes of those leaks, which disrupted a formerly crucial conduit of energy between Russia and Europe in the midst of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“I’m just not going to get ahead of that investigative work,” Kirby told reporters.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said much the same when asked by a reporter on March 7 about whether the Times’ story had come up in President Biden’s meeting with German Chancellor Olof Scholz.

“I’m just not gonna go beyond the readout that we provided on Friday with the chancellor’s visit here,” she added.

Russia had reduced and eventually cut off the flow of natural gas through the Nord Stream system in the months preceding the attack.

Germany on March 7 said it was aware of the report but is still at work on its own investigation.

The NSC spokesman was also asked whether the possible involvement of a pro-Ukraine group could compromise U.S. relations with Germany, which has struck a more neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict than many other European nations. Germany has historically relied on Russia for a significant percentage of its oil and gas, thanks in recent years to the Nord Stream network.

“We do believe, and the president has said this, that it was an act of sabotage. But we need to let these investigations conclude. And only then should we be looking at what follow-on actions might or might not be appropriate,” Kirby responded.

Reporting on the possible involvement of a pro-Ukraine group has said that no evidence links those actions with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy or other officials in the government.

According to the New York Times, the sabotage was not carried out with the aid of any British or American nationals.

The Epoch Times has not been able to independently confirm these reports.

Notably, the Times’ narrative comes just weeks after veteran U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the leak was the result of a “covert sea operation” allegedly by the United States.

An aide for Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s government was “absolutely not involved,” adding that the government had no additional knowledge on the incident.

In addition, Russia has not yet confirmed the reported findings from U.S. intel sources.

The Epoch Times has sought comment from the Russian government and Gazprom, the state-owned energy company that operates Nord Stream.

High-profile independent journalists have voiced skepticism about the latest disclosures from U.S. intelligence sources, suggesting it is unlikely the United States was ignorant of such an undertaking, or that U.S. operatives were not somehow involved.

“Ukraine has virtually no Navy, but according to the new narrative, some ‘pro-Ukrainian’ randos took it upon themselves ‘without the approval of Zelensky’ to sail to Denmark and blow up nordstream in the deep sea,” wrote journalist Jordan Schachtel on Twitter.

“Two options: Either we helped Ukraine blow up the Nordstream pipeline…or we didn’t, found out later and continued to provide tens of billions to an ‘ally’ which finds it preferable to risk great power conflict and draw us in,” Breaking Points’ Saagar Enjeti said on Twitter. “Not sure which is worse.”

Reuters contributed to this reporting

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Understand the Left’s support for mask-wearing and you will understand the Left.

he world’s most trusted evaluator of medical studies, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, has just released as close to a conclusive report on the effectiveness of masks against respiratory viruses such as COVID-19 as we are likely to have for the foreseeable future. The report assessed data from 78 different studies, including 11 new randomized controlled trials involving 610,872 participants.

Cochrane concluded, in the words of one of the authors, Dr. Tom Jefferson of Oxford University, “There is just no evidence that they (masks) make any difference. Full stop.”

Among the reasons for that assessment was Cochrane’s conclusion that states and countries with mask mandates fared no better than states and countries without.

Moreover, Dr. Jefferson’s conclusions were not limited to cloth and surgical masks. Regarding N95 masks, Jefferson said the same thing: “Makes no difference—none of it.”

As for the early COVID-19 studies that policymakers cited to justify mandates for mask wearing, Jefferson said: “They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”

For example, PolitiFact, one of the so-called “fact-checkers” whose primary function is to declare whatever differs from the Left as “false,” declared in 2021 that studies “have consistently found that mask mandates cause sharp declines in coronavirus case rates.”

Bret Stephens, one of the two or three non-Left columnists at the New York Times, wrote this about the Cochrane study: “Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’ for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.”

Stephens’ description of those who differed with the Left and the “experts” on universal mask-wearing as having been “furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’” is, of course, entirely accurate.

We were right, but the Left controlled all the tech giants—and except for Twitter, they still do. They, not we, were the ones who spread misinformation about masks—and about lockdowns, the origins of COVID-19, the claim that there was no early treatment for COVID-19 (just wait for the vaccines and hope you don’t die in the meantime), Trump campaign collusion with Russia, the Hunter Biden laptop and every other issue that divides Left from Right.

Even now, after the Cochrane report, the Left continues to push for mask-wearing.

There were more than 3,000 comments on Bret Stephens’ column in the New York Times. Every single one of the most popular comments said the Cochrane report was flawed. I did not read all 3,000-plus comments, but I could not find one that agreed with Stephens or Cochrane. Note that in order to comment on a New York Times article, one must be a New York Times subscriber. These people are as representative of the American Left as any group could be.

And the Washington Post Editorial Board just published a lead editorial, “In a crowded place, a face mask or respirator keeps the virus away,” taking issue with the Cochrane review.

The people who boast that they—unlike the Right—only “follow the science” are lying to themselves, to us, or to both. Leftists have no interest in “the science” when it conflicts with any position they hold. Science said schools should be kept open, that closing them would do great damage to many young people. Yet, with a few exceptions such as Sweden, the Left clamored for, and where in power, closed schools. Science tells us that COVID-19 vaccines are not helpful—and even potentially injurious—to young people (Denmark strongly discourages any healthy person under 50 from getting a COVID-19 vaccine). Yet until this year, nearly every American university forced students to get vaccinated, and many still do.

So why, even despite the science, does the Left insist on wearing—and forcing others to wear—masks?

I will offer four reasons.

One reason is that the further Left one goes, the more fear governs an individual’s life.

This is true because the more one is governed by fear, the more one is likely to take left-wing positions. And it is true because left-wing positions inculcate fear. In other words, the frightened gravitate to the Left, and the Left makes people frightened.

The second reason the Left still insists on mask wearing is that leftists don’t ask the question, “At what price?” In fact, the moment one asks that question, one becomes a conservative.

The price paid for mask wearing is huge. Not seeing people’s faces has a negative impact on human relations. People whose face cannot be seen are less human—isn’t that why people who oppose the Muslim veil oppose it? Doesn’t the veil dehumanize the woman whose face disappears behind it? What is the effective difference between the veil and the mask? There is none. And what about children who don’t see faces outside of their house? What about patients who don’t see the faces of nurses and doctors? The nursing home residents who can’t see the smiles and hear the unmuffled speech of their caregivers? The harm done is huge.

A third reason for left-wing support for masks is that leftists read, listen to, and watch left-wing media only. Thus, they were completely ignorant of all that we who opposed masks knew thanks to the fact that we also consume non-Left media.

A fourth reason the Left insists on forcing others to wear masks is that controlling others’ lives is in the Left’s raison d’etre. Controlling others is what leftism is all about. That is why the Left seeks ever-expanding government. There is no such thing as increasing the size of government but not increasing the amount of government control over people’s lives. By definition, more government means more control over people’s lives. There is no example of the Left gaining power anywhere in the world and at any time since the Left took over Russia in 1917 and not restricting the freedom of its citizens.

Understand the Left’s support for mask-wearing and you will understand the Left.

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS

SOURCE: American Greatness

There’s a reason why freedom of speech and of the press are both in the First Amendment. Yet since 2016, no single institution has done more damage to our country
than the media.

he latest complete flip-flops regarding the underpinnings of the COVID regime should end any remaining debate: the media is the single biggest threat to America and Americans. 

Virtually everything the media told us on the two seminal issues of the past six years—Trump-Russia collusion and the panoply of COVID-19 reactions—was wrong. This is well beyond frustrating. It has been a disaster for America as trust levels have cratered for the media and consequently for virtually every establishment institution. American’s barely even trust their fellow Americans. And all of this comes before we even consider the excess deaths that may have resulted from the suppression of alternatives to vaccines, the shutdowns of states, and the masking of children. 

We are a nation riven in discord, and it could not have happened without the media playing the central connecting role in selling the disinformation scandals. It is the one constant. 

Neither the FBI, the Department of Justice, nor the intelligence community composed of so many agencies and private interests could have pursued their Trump-Russia narrative with anything like the success they had without the aid and abetment of the media. The medical establishment could not have sold the destructive array of policies it did without the abetting role of the media. 

The media acting as a guard dog rather than a watchdog over our most powerful institutions will always result in dangerous levels of corruption. Yet the persistent and problematic dynamic remains: too many Americans still open the digital pages of newspapers or turn on news shows and think they are getting good, third-party information. This tacit acceptance is the only way so many could be so deceived on the Russia collusion hoax and the novel ideas that masks stop viruses, natural immunity doesn’t work, and shutdowns stop the natural progression of viruses. 

Simply put, we could not have arrived at this dire place of quasi civil war if we had a functioning media in the way we, at one point, at least aspired to have—not this almost Pravda-like incarnation that we have today. 

How We Got Here

But neither can we simply do without the media. This is the painful truth. A free and functioning media is essential to America. The rights of the media are ensconced right there in the First Amendment’s free press clause, buttressed by the free speech clause for all of us. The founders understood that an informed citizenry was necessary to the operation of the constitutional republic they had established. 

Newspapers were openly partisan at the time, supporting John Adams or Thomas Jefferson, and were used as openly partisan tools for their candidates and causes. But everyone knew that. If they were reading the Philadelphia paper, they knew it was a Jefferson instrument to savage Adams. The opposite was understood of the Boston paper. No one pretended otherwise. There was a refreshing honesty to the arrangement. 

In the 20th century, however, and particularly during the second half, the media became “more professional”—with college degrees required and credentials established by the most powerful among the players. Thus it sought to play the role of a fair arbiter of information for Americans. This was a golden opportunity for the then-mainstream media to be the place where Left and Right and everyone in between could go for information, and then debate from a common base of knowledge. 

The concept of an objective, fair and balanced media—represented in the popular imagination by the likes of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, the New York Times, Washington Post and others—was a relatively novel concept that never really existed as much as we believed it might. But for a while, the media made attempts to hold the powerful accountable in government and in major corporations. Sure, it was always biased, but in my 25 years in daily newspapers, most reporters I worked with personally were making the effort. And it was a good thing for America.

That time is long behind us. Even conceptually it is not pursued. The odd reporter making an effort at something like old-school journalism—Bari Weiss, Alex Berenson, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Jesse Singal and others—is hounded out of the media formerly known as mainstream to find homes on Substack or elsewhere.

Our hope for an honest media rapidly retreated from reality as captured leftist schools of journalism churned out endless streams of radicalized Nikole Hannah-Joneses rather than Bob Woodwards, and the media veered more sharply left. The eruption of Donald Trump on the scene and his shock election in 2016 ended the charade of the fake news entirely. 

The media acted as a mouthpiece for the administrative state and the Democratic Party and rapidly separated Americans into their two silos—one silo getting their information from leftist, corporate media and the other silo getting theirs from conservative alternative media. Increasingly, we had no common language or basis for knowledge, civil discourse became rare if not impossible, and genuine debate unthinkable. Those on the other side were assumed to be ignoramuses immediately upon any interaction. This was the doing of the corporate media. 

The Dangers Revealed

It’s worth painting a picture of just how dangerous the media has been since the mask has been ripped off “trusted” journalism to reveal an industry engulfed in leftist RightSpeak and partisan work rivaling some of the world’s best state media organs. 

There is little need to revisit how thoroughly debunked the Trump-Russia collusion narrative is at this point. It is perhaps most evident in the fact that the media itself has completely stopped talking about it, albeit never correcting its horrific record of coverage. The hoax did what it was supposed to. But in true information silo fashion, millions of Americans still believe Trump got away with it and that he is and always was a Putin puppet. And that breakdown is almost entirely along party lines—a direct reflection of where each side is getting its news. 

But this one-time champion story of egregious media behavior—undermining a duly elected American president—has now been dethroned now by the media-COVID-expert establishment coverage from March 2020 onward (which in all likelihood, dovetailed with the efforts to remove Trump via the Putin puppet narrative.) 

The evidence of media malfeasance is indisputable. The media was wrong or corrupt over and over again on the COVID regime: They claimed for years that: 

Media claim: The virus didn’t come from the Wuhan virus lab. 

Truth: The U.S. Energy Department and the FBI are now saying it likely came from the lab in Wuhan. Not fringe. Not racist. Of course, even Jon Stewart understood this in 2021, although statist fanboy Stephen Colbert tried to shut him down. 

Media claim: Natural immunity does not offer protection.

Truth: Natural immunity is effective against COVID—and always was—according to no less than the Lancet: “Our meta-analyses showed that protection from past infection and any symptomatic disease was high for ancestral, alpha, beta, and delta variants . . . ” 

Media claim: Shutdowns were necessary to save lives.

Truth: Johns Hopkins researchers have concluded that shutdowns had no significant effect on COVID mortality. And apparently that was never the goal, anyway, as Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a recent interview: “You use lockdowns to get people vaccinated.” 

Media claim: Masks were effective in stopping the spread.

Truth: The Cochrane Review, considered among the best at analyzing study results, concludes masks don’t work, and never did. Oxford’s Tom Jefferson, the lead author of the Cochrane Review, summed up the real science on masks: “There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.” Of course, the WHO and CDC knew this before March 2020. As did the media.

But all of these lies—it is difficult to consider them anything else by the summer of 2020—advanced an agenda of consolidating power in the hands of elites: health experts, government, and pharmaceuticals. 

For instance, the brand new unsupported claim that natural immunity did not offer protection upended centuries of studies and proofs. But importantly, it paved the way for mandating vaccines. More than making some powerful corporations tens of billions of dollars in profits, this created the precedent for government, in league with corporations if need be, to have the authority to mandate all Americans be injected with whatever the government says. This unprecedented intrusion will come up again. 

And once more, none of it could have happened without the active involvement of the media. 

The damage done by this monolithic media failure on behalf of the American people may never be fully calculable, from an enormous loss of individual liberty to plummeting children’s academic achievement, to millions of the world’s poorest people thrown back into extreme poverty, to shutdowns killing innumerable small businesses and spiking teen depression and suicide rates. 

The essential player in it all has been the media.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Joe Biden’s Medicare budget proposals are a tiresome combination of misrepresentations and focus-grouped scare tactics, plus old-fashioned tax increases and Medicare payment cuts.

Indeed, Biden’s remarks have simply reaffirmed Washington’s Medicare policy for most of the program’s history. It’s the policy strategy that has worsened the program’s financial problems while threatening seniors’ access to quality care.

First, the president dismisses the gravity of the issues facing Medicare and resorts to partisan politics on problems that require bipartisan cooperation.

In their 2021 report, the Medicare trustees declared:

The financial projections in this report indicate a need for substantial changes to address Medicare’s financial challenges. The sooner solutions are enacted, the more flexible and gradual they can be.

The early introduction of reforms increases the time available for affected individuals and organizations—including health care providers, beneficiaries, and taxpayers—to adjust their expectations and behavior. The Trustees recommend that Congress and the executive branch work closely together with a sense of urgency to address these challenges.

Instead of asking for cooperation, the president is attacking congressional Republicans for Medicare changes that they haven’t proposed, while conspicuously ignoring the fact that a clear majority of House Democrats are on record sponsoring national health insurance legislation that would simultaneously explode federal spending and taxes while “sunsetting” Medicare for real—including Medicare Advantage and all private and employer-sponsored health insurance.

For example, Biden has accused congressional Republicans of turning Medicare into a “voucher” program. A voucher is a certificate or a piece of paper redeemable in cash for a good or service. No House or Senate Republican has sponsored any such program.

Instead, virtually all past Medicare reform programs since the 1990s (most of them bipartisan) have been based on a market-based defined-contribution system. That’s the financing system of Medicare Advantage, which today covers more than 46% (and growing) of all Medicare beneficiaries and more than 8 million federal employees, retirees, and their families.

It’s astonishing that the president would strongly condemn a financing system that’s already soon to be the dominant form of Medicare financing.  

Second, Biden doubles down on the alleged advantages of price-controlled Medicare payments. Biden promises to build on Medicare’s newly enacted “negotiation power.” That’s a false characterization of the process. Medicare does not “negotiate” prices; it fixes them.

There has never been a case where price controls fixing prices below market levels has failed to produce shortages of goods and services.

Medicare payment reductions will reduce revenue and guarantee lower pharmaceutical investment in research and development, discourage the development of new or breakthrough drugs, and have other negative health consequences. University of Chicago economist Tomas Philipson predicts that under the new law there will be a 45% reduction in pharmaceutical revenues by 2031.

Curiously, Biden also applauds the failed Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) Medicare payment policy, which—according to the Congressional Budget Office—reduced Medicare payments, mostly to the hospitalization program, by an estimated $716 billion for the years 2013 through 2022.

Benefit payment cuts directly threaten those dependent on the benefits. And indeed the Medicare trustees have repeatedly warned that those cuts to hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, and even hospice organizations would threaten seniors’ access to quality care.

Moreover, as the trustees also point out, Medicare payment policy also threatens access to physician care. In 2021, the Medicare actuaries observed, “Absent a change in the delivery system or level of update by subsequent legislation, we expect access to Medicare-participating physicians to become a significant issue in the long-term under current law.”

Third, in calling for even more taxation, Biden ignores the mounting tax burdens that already exist to finance Medicare. From the standpoint of federal taxpayers, the cost of Part B, the part of the program that finances physician care, will present the biggest challenge.

In 2019, Medicare payments drawn from the Treasury consumed 17% of all federal income taxes. By 2040, those costs are projected to consume 26.6% of them.

Millennials and future generations won’t know what hit them.

But there’s a better way to reform Medicare.

The best path forward would be to harness the power of personal choice and intense competition among plans and providers.

That can be done by building on the success of the Medicare Advantage program, which, unlike traditional Medicare, provides protection from the financial devastation of catastrophic illness.

Congress also could fix the flaws in its payment system. Lawmakers could also expand certain benefits not now available, such as allowing beneficiaries to take advantage of health savings accounts, as well as drug coverage in medical savings accounts plans, and hospice coverage for end-of-life care.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post Biden’s 2023 Medicare Proposal Doubles Down on Failed Policies of Past appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sophie Lehman departed her job as Contra Costa County’s manager of elections operations last June. Several months later, Lehman was the point of contact for what eventually would be a $2 million election grant for the California county going into the 2024 election cycle. 

Today, Lehman is associate director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which became well known in 2020 for doling out $350 million in election administration grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. 

The nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life went on to establish the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, which includes a partner organization funded last April by liberal donor Arabella Advisors. 

Zuckerberg no longer is funding election administration through donations, after almost half the states enacted bans or restrictions on such private money and members of Congress introduced legislation to restrict private money from paying for election administration. 

Staffers in Contra Costa County’s election office were excited about being in the Alliance for Election Excellence. But they had some trepidation about the language of the contract, as shown by about 100 pages of communications with, or about, the Center for Tech and Civic Life obtained by The Daily Signal.

Lehman, the former Contra Costa election administrator, also was the point of contact for more than a dozen other jurisdictions chosen to be helped with grants by the Alliance for Election Excellence, according to emails obtained in The Daily Signal’s requests for public records in jurisdictions that belong to the alliance.

Nothing seems to suggest that Contra Costa County was treated differently from other jurisdictions in the election alliance’s competitive process. The county in California’s San Francisco Bay area, with a population of over 1 million, actually got less money or a comparable amount to run elections than did other jurisdictions accepted by the alliance. 

“Sophie left Contra Costa County in June,” Tommy Gong, the county’s deputy clerk-recorder, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview late Monday. “We submitted our application [for an election administration grant] in April, before she left. There was no indication that she was going to work for the CTCL [Center for Tech and Civic Life]. We didn’t have information about the selection process.”

Whitney May, CTCL co-founder and director of government services, previewed a visit by the Center for Tech and Civic Life to Contra Costa County as a Center for Election Excellence in an Aug. 11 email to officials there. 

“Sophie Lehman, formerly with Contra Costa County elections and now an associate director with CTCL, will be participating in the site visit,” May wrote. “Sophie is managing the CTCL relationships with all Centers, and moving forward, you can think of Sophie as your CTCL point person.”

Lehman worked for the county elections office for five years. 

The Daily Signal sought comment from both Lehman and the Center for Tech and Civic Life’s press office for this report. Neither responded. 

‘Charitable and Educational’

In mid-December, Contra Costa County officials grew cautious about working with the Center for Tech and Civic Life because of wording in the contract attached to the $2 million election administration grant. 

“CTCL has decided to make this grant to support activities that are consistent with these charitable and educational purposes,” the contract says in one section.

Deborah R. Cooper, then Contra Costa’s clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, asked the county’s legal department about the language. 

“However, we cannot agree to the additional change that they have proposed,” Cooper wrote in a Dec. 13 email to the county’s legal team. “Specifically, they’d like to change the purposes section to read ‘CTCL has decided to make this grant to support activities that are consistent with these charitable and educational purposes.’”

Cooper’s message continues: “The terms ‘charitable purpose’  and ‘educational purpose’ have a specific meaning under the tax code that are specific to nonprofit organizations and, thus, might restrict the county’s internal use of the monies.”

The concern about the words “education” and “charitable” emerged because some political organizations use the terms voter education when advocating certain candidates or issues. Other nonprofit organizations that sometimes engage in public affairs issues are defined under the tax code as charitable organizations

Gong told The Daily Signal that the contract’s language initially “raised red flags” that Contra Costa  officials should ensure that the county wasn’t working with a nonprofit that would be engaged in voter education or outreach in favor of a specific candidate or ballot initiative. 

After a review and negotiations about the language, officials were satisfied that’s not the case, the election administrator said. 

“The membership and grant funds stipulate a commitment to nonpartisanship, that CTCL will never attempt to influence the outcome of any election,” Gong said in a follow-up email to The Daily Signal. 

Gong referred to contract language specifying that grant funds will not be used “to attempt to influence the outcome of any specific public election, or to participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements) any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” 

He added: “If there is in any way some inkling [of] partisanship or influence in this manner when participating in the program, we will immediately review our membership and consider terminating it.”

‘Ugly Stepsister’

In October, the Election Infrastructure Initiative—set up by CTCL founder Tina Epps-Johnson—issued a report titled “Administering the 2022 Midterm Elections: Chronicling the Election Needs of Local Election Officials.” 

 Stuart Baum, CTCL’s advocacy associate, sent the report to Gong and other Contra Costa officials in an Oct. 18 email.

The report includes a comment, attributed to “a local election official from California,” that says: “Elections are always the ugly stepsister that the county only reluctantly funds. We’re never high on the priority list.” 

In an Oct. 21 reply, Gong jokingly wrote: “Great that you started with my quote as being the ugly stepsister of the county. Thank god It’s [sic] anonymous!”

Gong, previously clerk-recorder for San Luis Obispo County’s election office, told The Daily Signal that he first heard the “ugly stepsister” phrase 20 years ago in reference to election budgets.

Gong said he understands the concerns about private money funding elections that led 24 states to enact bans on the practice. But, he said, the core problem is how well-resourced elections offices are.

“I understand that perspective,” Gong said in a phone interview. “But the overall questions is: Are elections being funded properly? If election offices had what they needed to do their job properly, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Over the last 20 years, with HAVA [the Help America Vote Act of 2002] there are more and more requirements of election offices,” he said. “With budget cuts, this can be a pickle. So from the perspective of election officials, [the question] is how to get the job done.”

‘Pivot’ on Paying

Lehman, the former Contra Costa County election official, sent a Nov. 22 email to the county’s current election officials, expressing “congratulations” before informing them of a “pivot.” The pivot meant the county would have to pay. 

“In addition to celebrating your work, compliance with federal, state, and local laws is a top priority for the Alliance,” Lehman wrote, referring to the Alliance for Election Excellence. “This means that we’ve been meeting with Alliance partners and our expert legal team to design a membership structure so jurisdictions from across the country can participate in the program.”

“To be clear,” she added in the email, “this is a pivot from our original vision that would have offered Alliance programming for free, and it reflects our commitment to integrity and compliance.”

Her email goes on to note: “The agreement will also describe scholarship options available to jurisdictions on a purely voluntary basis where such support is consistent with applicable law.”

Contra Costa County opted for premium membership in the Alliance for Election Excellence, which cost $4,800 a year, and opted to accept a scholarship to pay for it, Gong said. 

“We opted to take advantage of the scholarship for our taxpayers,” Gong said. 

The election alliance’s scholarships are converted into “credits” that member election offices may use to buy services from CTCL and other alliance partners, according to a January report from the Honest Elections Project and the John Locke Foundation. 

“As a result, [election] offices receive access to funds they can spend exclusively on services provided by left-wing companies and nonprofits, entirely outside normal public funding channels,” that report says. “Based on documentation obtained through the public records process, these services range from ‘legal’ and ‘political’ consulting to public relations and guidance on recruitment and training.”

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post Big Tech Group Spurs Questions With $2M Election Grant to California County appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar sit on the Senate Task Force for Combating Anti-Semitism

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) last fall trained their fire on Ticketmaster after bungled sales for Taylor Swift’s concert tour led to price-gouging and automated scalping, calling on the Department of Justice to investigate the ticketing giant. But when the company doled out tickets to Louis Farrakhan’s rally—in which the Nation of Islam leader defended Adolf Hitler and predicted another Holocaust against Jews—the Democratic duo had nothing to say.

Blumenthal went on a crusade against Ticketmaster in November, saying “consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior.” Klobuchar said she had “serious concerns” about Ticketmaster’s failure to get the so-called Swifties tickets efficiently and wrote to the company’s chief executive officer demanding answers.

Neither Blumenthal, who has warned that the “horrors of the Holocaust” could happen again if Americans don’t fight anti-Semitism, nor Klobuchar, who has pledged “to confront anti-Semitism,” have criticized Ticketmaster for profiting off of the Farrakhan ticketing sales. The two senators, who sit on the Senate’s Task Force for Combating Anti-Semitism, did not respond to requests for comment.

Farrakhan during his speech claimed that Jews control the levers of power in Washington, Hollywood, and global finance and are using these powers to corrupt the world. “Somebody has to take on the synagogue of Satan,” he said. “We cannot let them take the country.” Critics had urged Ticketmaster, which charges service fees on each ticket it sells, to drop the Farrakhan event from its sales platform, but the ticket giant did not budge.

Among House Democrats, there has also been silence from lawmakers who criticized Ticketmaster in the past. Last November, more than two dozen House Democrats sent a letter to Ticketmaster, saying it “strangled competition for ticketing in the live entertainment marketplace.” The Washington Free Beacon reached out to 28 members who signed the letter and are still in Congress to get their thoughts on Ticketmaster’s decision to sell seats at the Farrakhan event. None of them responded.

Democrats who signed the letter included Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.).

Omar has a history of incendiary statements about Jews. She claimed in 2019 that U.S. support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins baby,” suggesting that lawmakers were being bribed to back the Jewish state. That remark and others, in which she downplayed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, led Republicans to remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year.

Farrakhan defended Omar’s “Benjamins” comment, saying she had a “sweet heart” and was helping to “shake the government up, but you have nothing to apologize for.”

Tlaib, one of the most vocal anti-Israel lawmakers in Congress, faced criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and members of her own party in September after she claimed that Americans “cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel’s apartheid government.”

Lee, who has attended an event with Farrakhan, denounced the preacher’s “anti-Semitic and hateful comments” amid public pressure in 2018.

During his speech last week, Farrakhan assailed the “stranglehold that Jews have on this government” and claimed “Jewish power is what has all of our people of knowledge and wisdom and talent afraid.”

Farrakhan criticized Jews who use the phrase “Never Again” when discussing the Holocaust.

“You can say that to men, but you can’t say that to God. Because the Bible says, behold, the day cometh that shall burn—as a what?—as an oven. And those who do wickedly, He will slay them.”

“God is not unjust; when he kills you, you know you deserved it,” he added.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.)—who also spoke out about the Taylor Swift debacle—weighed in on the Farrakhan controversy when contacted by the Free Beacon.

“It is extremely concerning that Ticketmaster is choosing to use its platform to elevate and promote a well-known anti-Semite. The targeting of the Jewish people has gone on far too long and must stop,” she said.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), a Ticketmaster critic who serves as the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also said the company needs to be “completely transparent” about its decision to profit off anti-Semitism.

“Anti-Semitism has no place in America,” McMorris Rodgers said. “Ticketmaster should be completely transparent on why it chose to profit off of Farrakhan’s abhorrent history of hatred and violent threats of genocide against the Jewish people.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A left-wing activist group this week launched a campaign to label Federalist Society chairman Leonard Leo as the head of a “dark money network.” The group may not have a leg to stand on, considering the millions of dollars it receives in untraceable, dark money donations. 

Accountable.US on Monday unveiled a website dedicated to painting Leo as “the real Mr. MAGA,” a shady figure wielding dark money to change the American judiciary. But the group is at the heart of the exact kind of network it decries. Since 2019, Accountable.US has taken nearly $9 million from the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit that funds progressive causes without disclosing its donors, according to tax filings. The group is part of a network of progressive groups funded by the progressive billionaire George Soros, which seeks to pack the Supreme Court to dilute the votes of conservative justices.

This is the latest example of Democratic groups complaining about dark money while raking it in themselves. According to the New York Times, the largest Democrat-aligned dark money organizations spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020, compared with $900 million for Republican dark money groups. 

Progressive groups have increasingly set their sights on Leo over his advocacy for conservative judges in the federal judiciary and Supreme Court. Activists also blame Leo, the former vice president of the influential Federalist Society, for laying the groundwork to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

But the New Venture Fund has given millions of dollars to groups like Demand Justice, which has led calls to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court in order to dilute the votes of conservative justices. The fund and its related organizations, including Arabella Advisors and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, do not disclose their donors. But some prominent Democratic donors have disclosed their contributions to the organizations—including Soros, who has contributed around $35 million to the New Venture Fund since 2020. 

While Accountable.US accuses Leo of carrying out former president Donald Trump’s “MAGA agenda,” the activists behind the progressive nonprofit recently launched the Congressional Integrity Project, an initiative to defend the Biden administration against congressional oversight and against investigations into President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings. 

The Congressional Integrity Project, which has received $1.5 million in donations from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, has colluded with the White House and members of Congress to stifle congressional investigations into the Biden administration and into the Biden family’s business dealings. According to one report, the Congressional Integrity Project has coordinated with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, to stymie the Republican probes. 

The Congressional Integrity Project hosted a conference call with reporters last Friday to tout the release of a dossier from House Judiciary Committee Democrats that smears three former FBI agents-turned-whistleblowers who say the bureau unfairly targets conservative groups. It is unclear if the group helped with the dossier. 

Accountable.US did not respond to a request for comment. 

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration is moving at least two dozen Customs and Border Protection agents, including some stationed at the southern border, to New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont as illegal immigration surges at the northern border.

A rise in Mexican migrants entering the United States illegally after flying to Canada has led the agency to pull agents from areas “not experiencing an influx” to the three states, called the Swanton Sector, “due to migration fluctuations along the northern border,” a CBP official told NBC News.

Swanton agents reported an 846 percent increase in migrant encounters between October and January compared with the same time period in 2021 and 2022. In January 2023, 367 migrants were apprehended, compared with only 24 in January 2022.

The migration surge at both borders comes as lawmakers accuse the Biden administration of withholding necessary resources to stem the flow of illegal immigration. Republicans last week called for the federal government to reimburse Texas for border enforcement.

“Texas has been forced by this administration to go it alone when it comes to securing our border,” said Rep. Pat Fallon (R., Texas).

Mexican migrants at the northern border are less likely to be turned away under Title 42, a pandemic-era rule that allows agents to immediately expel immigrants, NBC News reported:

Mexicans, more than any other nationality, have been blocked at the southern border and prevented from asking for asylum since Title 42 COVID restrictions went into effect in March 2020. 

Those migrants who can afford the $350 one-way plane ticket from Mexico City or Cancun to Montreal or Toronto and then cross the northern U.S. border are less likely to be turned back because of Title 42 than migrants at the southern border. On a per capita basis, the Border Patrol invokes Title 42 to block migrants from claiming asylum less frequently at the northern border than at the southern border.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Gigi Sohn withdraws name from consideration after losing Dem support in US Senate

Joe Biden’s pick for the Federal Communications Commission has withdrawn her name from consideration after widespread reporting on her anti-conservative, pro-censorship views.

FCC pick Gigi Sohn, whose nomination has floundered in the Senate since Biden first nominated her two years ago, announced the move after Democratic senator Joe Manchin (W.Va.) said he would vote against her. In a statement shared with the Washington Post, Sohn blamed “media industry lobbyists” and “dark money political groups” for forcing her to step aside.

Sohn has a long history of controversy, as the Washington Free Beacon has documented over the years. After the president first nominated her in October 2021, telecommunications experts warned that, as an FCC commissioner, Sohn could use government power against conservative media.

Sohn has questioned whether the government should allow broadcasting licenses for right-leaning networks, calling for the FCC to investigate the networks and singling out Fox News as “propaganda,” the Free Beacon reported. If Sohn had become a commissioner, she could have voted on stripping networks of their licenses.

“There’s reason for concern she’d take punitive action against conservative voices,” one expert told the Free Beacon.

Republicans aren’t the only ones to take issue with Sohn. At least two Hispanic groups criticized her nomination, with the president of one suggesting that she may be “racist.”

A left-wing media advocacy group attempted to defend the nomination by saying that opposition to Sohn, who is white, is “anti-black,” the Free Beacon reported in January.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

More than 55,000 felons will have the right to vote in Minnesota after Democratic governor Tim Walz signed a law doing away with voting bans for convicts under felony probation or supervision.

“As a state that consistently ranks among the top three in voter turnout, Minnesota will continue to lead in the fight to protect and expand the right to vote,” said Walz, who signed the “Restore the Vote” bill on March 3.

The act goes into effect on July 1. Minnesota previously allowed felons to vote once they cleared probation, prison time, and supervision.

Minnesota’s legislation marks Democrats’ latest controversial effort regarding voting restrictions. In December, the Boston City Council held hearings to discuss the prospect of non-citizen immigrants voting in local elections, with one member arguing it would “enrich” the “concept of citizenship.”

State Republicans argued that Minnesotans who commit serious crimes should first complete probation before being able to vote. Democrats refused and said voting rights ought to be restored immediately after release.

The Republican Party of Minnesota said Democrats “killed legislation to require murderers and rapists to complete their sentences before becoming eligible to vote.”

Minnesota will join 21 other states that restore voting rights after prison release, the Epoch Times reported:

Currently, 21 other states restore the voting rights of felons once they leave prison, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, including Republican-led North Dakota, Indiana, and Utah.

In Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, convicted felons are allowed to vote while they are still incarcerated, irrespective of their crimes—a situation some California lawmakers are currently looking to legalize in their state.

In 16 states, felons lose their voting rights while incarcerated and for a period of time after, according to the NCSL. Eleven other states completely strip felons of voting rights for some crimes, or require a pardon by the state’s governor or other action for rights to be restored.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Rape, murder, sex trafficking

What happened: Petty tyrant Alex Murdaugh, the Democratic donor convicted of brutally murdering his wife and 22-year-old son, was sentenced to life in prison last week. Murdaugh, who was represented at trial by Democratic donor Dick Harpootlian, made a maximum donation of $2,800 to President Joe Biden’s campaign during the Democratic primary, less than a year before he gunned down his family in cold blood. He faces dozens of additional charges for stealing money from injured poor people, among other things.

Why it matters: Murdaugh’s conviction and sentencing is the most recent example of an alarming trend: Democratic donors spending the rest of their lives in prison for unspeakable acts of cruelty and barbarism. We believe our readers should be alerted.

In addition to Murdaugh, at least three major Democratic donors are rotting in prison after being convicted of heinous crimes.

• Harvey Weinstein: The disgraced Hollywood mogul and Democratic Party patron was sentenced last month to 16 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. Weinstein, 70, was already serving 23 years following his conviction on separate charges of rape and sexual assault. He has donated more than half a million dollars to Democratic candidates and committees over the past two decades. Biden’s most trusted aide, Anita Dunn, was among the communications experts Weinstein approached for “damage control” advice after being exposed as a serial rapist in 2016.

• Ed Buck: The California activist, who has donated more than half a million dollars to Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Adam Schiff, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in April 2022. Buck, 68, was found guilty of luring vulnerable young men to his home, injecting them with methamphetamine, and sexually assaulting them. Two of his victims died as a result of what prosecutors described as the Democratic donor’s “lethal and unchecked pattern of reckless disregard for human life.”

• Ghislaine Maxwell: When the Clinton pal and devoted sidekick of jet-setting pedophile Jeffrey Epstein became a U.S. citizen in 2002, she immediately wrote a check to first-time gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.). Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to failed hedge-fund manager Marc Mezvinsky in 2010 and reportedly had a signed copy of former president Bill Clinton’s 2004 memoir, My Life, inscribed with the message, “To Ghislaine with love.” In June 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking related to Epstein’s serial abuse of underage girls.

Honorable mention: Bernie Madoff died in federal prison in 2021 while serving a 150-year sentence for orchestrating a $65 million Ponzi scheme. He donated $200,000 to Democratic Party committees and candidates including Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer (N.Y.). Madoff didn’t murder anyone directly, but several of his victims committed suicide after realizing they’d been swindled out of their life savings.

Bottom line: Over the past several decades, the Democratic Party has been financed by some of history’s greatest monsters.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden has faced criticism for failing to address Beijing’s hostile behavior

China’s foreign minister on Tuesday warned that “confrontation and conflict” are on the horizon unless the United States backs down to China, a warning that comes as President Joe Biden faces criticism for failing to address Beijing’s hostile behavior.

“If the U.S. side does not put on the brakes and continues down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can stop the derailment and rollover into confrontation and conflict,” Qin Gang, a former ambassador to the United States, said at the National People’s Conference in Beijing, NBC News reported. Qin warned that continued efforts from the United States at “containment and suppression” of China would make conflict inevitable.

The warning comes as President Joe Biden faces backlash on the homefront for allowing a Chinese spy balloon last month to traverse the entire United States before ordering it shot down over the Atlantic Ocean. While Biden repeatedly characterizes U.S.-China relations as “competition, not conflict,” Qin disputed the president’s view, saying China will fight America’s “zero-sum game.”

The foreign minister also condemned the United States’ support for Taiwan and the takedown of the Chinese spy balloon, accusing the U.S. military of “abusing force.”

Meanwhile, North Korea on Tuesday warned of its willingness to take “quick, overwhelming action” against the United States. The statement from Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, came a day after the United States and South Korea executed a B-52 bomber flight over the Korean Peninsula.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry responded in a statement, saying that if Washington and Seoul continue the operations, “there is no guarantee that there will be no violent physical conflict.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen lead charge on nominee who attempted to strip underage sexual assault victim of anonymity

Senate Democrats took a major step toward confirming embattled judicial nominee Michael Delaney on Tuesday morning after New Hampshire’s two Democratic senators pushed leadership to stand by the nominee, who is under fire for leading a successful push to unmask the identity of an underage sexual assault victim.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) scheduled a markup hearing for Michael Delaney for Thursday, a reversal of fortune for President Joe Biden’s nominee for the First Circuit. Just one week ago, Durbin omitted Delaney’s name from scheduled markup hearings as the family of a sexual assault victim spoke out against the nomination. The Judiciary chairman acknowledged Monday that important issues about Delaney’s character have been raised. New Hampshire senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan have led the charge on Delaney’s nomination despite unified Republican opposition and outcry from victims’ rights advocates.

The controversy surrounding Delaney stems from when he represented New Hampshire’s St. Paul’s School in a 2016 civil suit against Chessy Prout, then a minor who was sexually assaulted on campus when she was 15 years old. During proceedings, Delaney attempted to strip Prout’s anonymity, a move Prout’s family called an act of intimidation.

The victim’s father, Alex Prout, told the Washington Free Beacon that his family would attend the markup meeting “as a reminder that the voices of survivors need to be heard.” Earlier this month, Chessy Prout penned an op-ed in the Boston Globe with the headline “I know Michael Delaney. After what he did, he doesn’t deserve to be a judge.”

Despite the Prout family’s efforts, Democrats remain committed to making Delaney a judge. Shaheen and Hassan on Monday spoke with Durbin about Delaney’s nomination and left their meeting feeling confident in his eventual confirmation. Shaheen told reporters that Delaney would be an “excellent judge,” echoing words from a January letter she wrote with Hassan in which they lauded his “commitment to justice.”

The White House, which recently celebrated its 100th judicial confirmation, is set on beating former president Donald Trump’s record of 234 judges in his term. Only one of Biden’s judicial nominees has been voted down since the president took office. A spokesman for Senate Judiciary Democrats told NBC News on Monday that “the committee is exceeding the confirmation pace of both the Trump and Obama administrations.”

Delaney’s confirmation is still uncertain. Senate sources told the Free Beacon that it is not out of the question for a president to pull a nominee prior to a scheduled vote if his party does not have the votes. Two Democratic senators are unable to work, Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) due to a case of shingles and John Fetterman (Pa.) due to his hospitalization with depression, bringing the total number of Democratic votes down to 49.

Barring a quick return by Fetterman or Feinstein, that means at least one Republican would need to vote for Delaney’s confirmation to force a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris. A handful of Republicans could also be absent on the day of Delaney’s nomination, which would lower the threshold necessary for a majority.

A Senate source told the Free Beacon that the earliest Delaney could see a confirmation vote is March 16.

The victims’ rights organization End Rape on Campus on Tuesday called on supporters to “make your voice heard—tell your senators to oppose Michael Delaney’s nomination.”

“In order to end rape culture, we must advocate for legislative and cultural change at every possible opportunity,” the group said in a statement. “If confirmed, Michael Delaney’s appointment to this important position will send a chilling message to survivors of sexual assault and advocates.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon